UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA   SAN  DIEGO 


1822  02712  3454 


r 


LIBRARY 


^ 


mwmawammBum 


UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 


lilllliri^lNII^II^V,^^'^  SAN  DIEGO 


3  1822  02712  3454 


13 

T<33 

£7 


33j>  William  panics 


THE  VARIETIES  OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE:  A  STUDY  IN 
HUMAN  NATURE.  Gifford  Lectures  delivered  at  Edinburgh  in  1901- 
1902.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta:  Longmans, 
Green  &  Co.     1902. 

PRAGMATISM  :  A  NEW  NAME  FOR  SOME  OLD  WAYS  OF  THINK- 
ING: POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York, 
London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta  :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.     1907. 

THE  MEANING  OF  TRUTH:  A  SEQUEL  TO"  PRAGMATISM."  8vo. 
New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta:  Longmans,  Green  &  Co. 
1909. 

A  PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE:  HIBBERT  LECTURES  ON  THE 
PRESENT  SITUATION  IN  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York,  Lon- 
don, Bombay,  and  Calcutta :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.     1909. 

SOME  PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY:  A  BEGINNING  OF  AN  IN- 
TRODUCTION TO  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bom- 
bay, and  Calcutta  :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.     191  x. 

ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bom- 
bay, and  Calcutta  :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.     1912. 

THE    WILL   TO    BELIEVE,    AND    OTHER    ESSAYS    IN    POPULAR 

PHILOSOPHY.     i2mo.     New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta: 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.     1897. 
MEMORIES  AND  STUDIES.     8vo.     New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and 

Calcutta:  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.     191 1. 
THE     PRINCIPLES    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.     3  vols.,  8vo.    New  York; 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.     London:  Macmillan  &  Co.     1S90. 

PSYCHOLOGY:  BRIEFER  COURSE.  i2mo.  New  York:  Henry  Holt 
&  Co.     London  :  Macmillan  &  Co.     1892. 

TALKS  TO  TEACHERS  ON  PSYCHOLOGY:  AND  TO  STUDENTS 
ON  SOME  OF  LIFE'S  IDEALS,  izmo.  New  York :  Henry  Holt 
&  Co.   London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta  :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.    1899. 

HUMAN  IMMORTALITY:  TWO  SUPPOSED  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE 
DOCTRINE.  i6mo.  Boston:  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  London :  Archi- 
bald Constable  &  Co.     1898. 


THE  LITERARY  REMAINS  OF  HENRY  JAMES.  Edited,  with  an 
Introduction,  by  William  James.  With  Portrait.  Crown  8vo.  Boston: 
Houghton  Mifflin  Co.     1885. 


ESSAYS  IN 
RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

BY 
WILLIAM  JAMES 


* 


LONGMANS,  GREEN,  AND  CO. 
39  PATERNOSTER  ROW,  LONDON 

NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 
1912 


COPYRIGHT,    1912,    BY   HENRY  JAMES  JR. 
ALL    RIGHTS  RESERVED 


EDITOR'S    PREFACE 

The  present  volume  is  an  attempt  to  carry 
out  a  plan  which  William  James  is  known  to 
have  formed  several  years  before  his  death. 
In  1907  he  collected  reprints  in  an  envelope 
which  he  inscribed  with  the  title  *  Essays  in 
Radical  Empiricism';  and  he  also  had  dupli- 
cate sets  of  these  reprints  bound,  under  the 
same  title,  and  deposited  for  the  use  of  stu- 
dents in  the  general  Harvard  Library,  and  in 
the  Philosophical  Library  in  Emerson  Hall. 

Two  years  later  Professor  James  published 
The  Meaning  of  Truth  and  A  Pluralistic  Uni- 
verse, and  inserted  in  these  volumes  several  of 
the  articles  which  he  had  intended  to  use  in  the 
*  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism.'  Whether  he 
would  nevertheless  have  carried  out  his  original 
plan,  had  he  lived,  cannot  be  certainly  known. 
Several  facts,  however,  stand  out  very  clearly. 
In  the  first  place,  the  articles  included  in  the 
original  plan  but  omitted  from  his  later  vol- 
umes are  indispensable  to  the  understanding 

iii 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

of  his  other  writings.  To  these  articles  he  re- 
peatedly alludes.  Thus,  in  The  Meaning  of 
Truth  (p.  127),  he  says:  "This  statement  is 
probably  excessively  obscure  to  any  one  who 
has  not  read  my  two  articles  *  Does  Conscious- 
ness Exist  ? '  and  'A  World  of  Pure  Experi- 
ence.'" Other  allusions  have  been  indicated  in 
the  present  text.  In  the  second  place,  the  arti- 
cles originally  brought  together  as  *  Essays  in 
Radical  Empiricism '  form  a  connected  whole. 
Not  only  were  most  of  them  written  consecu- 
tively within  a  period  of  two  years,  but  they 
contain  numerous  cross-references.  In  the  third 
place,  Professor  James  regarded  *  radical  em- 
piricism '  as  an  independent  doctrine.  This  he 
asserted  expressly:  "Let  me  say  that  there  is 
no  logical  connexion  between  pragmatism,  as 
I  understand  it,  and  a  doctrine  which  I  have 
recently  set  forth  as  'radical  empiricism.'  The 
latter  stands  on  its  own  feet.  One  may  en- 
tirely reject  it  and  still  be  a  pragmatist." 
(Pragmatism,  1907,  Preface,  "p.  ix.)  Finally, 
Professor  James  came  toward  the  end  of  his 
life  to  regard  'radical  empiricism'  as  more 

iv 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

fundamental  and  more  important  than  *  prag- 
matism.' In  the  Preface  to  The  Meaning  of 
Truth  (1909),  the  author  gives  the  following 
explanation  of  his  desire  to  continue,  and  if 
possible  conclude,  the  controversy  over  prag- 
matism : "  I  am  interested  in  another  doctrine  in 
philosophy  to  which  I  give  the  name  of  radical 
empiricism,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  pragmatist  theory  of  truth  is  a 
step  of  first-rate  importance  in  making  radical 
empiricism  prevail"  (p.  xii). 

In  preparing  the  present  volume,  the  editor 
has  therefore  been  governed  by  two  motives. 
On  the  one  hand,  he  has  sought  to  preserve  and 
make  accessible  certain  important  articles  not 
to  be  found  in  Professor  James's  other  books. 
This  is  true  of  Essays  I,  II,  IV,  V,  VIII,  IX,  X, 
XI,  and  XII.  On  the  other  hand,  he  has  sought 
to  bring  together  in  one  volume  a  set  of  essays 
treating  systematically  of  one  independent,  co- 
herent, and  fundamental  doctrine.  To  this  end 
it  has  seemed  best  to  include  three  essays  (III, 
VI,  and  VII),  which,  although  included  in  the 
original  plan,  were  afterwards  reprinted  else- 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

where;  and  one  essay,  XII,  not  included  in  the 
original  plan.  Essays  III,  VI,  and  VII  are  in- 
dispensable to  the  consecutiveness  of  the  se- 
ries, and  are  so  interwoven  with  the  rest  that 
it  is  necessary  that  the  student  should  have 
them  at  hand  for  ready  consultation.  Essay 
XII  throws  an  important  light  on  the  author's 
general  *  empiricism,'  and  forms  an  important 
link  between  *  radical  empiricism'  and  the 
author's  other  doctrines. 

In  short,  the  present  volume  is  designed  not 
as  a  collection  but  rather  as  a  treatise.  It  is 
intended  that  another  volume  shall  be  issued 
which  shall  contain  papers  having  biographical 
or  historical  importance  which  have  not  yet 
been  reprinted  in  book  form.  The  present  vol- 
ume is  intended  not  only  for  students  of  Pro- 
fessor James's  philosophy,  but  for  students 
of  metaphysics  and  the  theory  of  knowledge. 
It  sets  forth  systematically  and  within  brief 
compass  the  doctrine  of  'radical  empiricism.' 

A  word  more  may  be  in  order  concerning  the 
general  meaning  of  this  doctrine.  In  the  Pre- 
face to  the  Will  to  Believe  (1898),  Professor 

vi 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

James  gives  the  name  "radical  empiricism"  to 
his  "  philosophic  attitude,"  and  adds  the  follow- 
ing explanation:  "I  say  'empiricism/  because 
it  is  contented  to  regard  its  most  assured  con- 
clusions concerning  matters  of  fact  as  hypo- 
theses liable  to  modification  in  the  course  of 
future  experience;  and  I  say  '  radical,'  because 
it^treats  the  doctrine  of  monism  itself  as  an 
hypothesis,  and,  unlike  so  much  of  the  halfway 
empiricism  that  is  current  under  the  name  of 
positivism  or  agnosticism  or  scientific  natural- 
ism, it  does  not  dogmatically  affirm  monism  as 
something  with  which  all  experience  has  got 
to  square"  (pp.  vii-viii).  An  'empiricism'  of 
this  description  is  a  "philosophic  attitude" 
or  temper  of  mind  rather  than  a  doctrine, 
and  characterizes  all  of  Professor  James's 
writings.  It  is  set  forth  in  Essay  XII  of  the 
present  volume. 

In  a  narrower  sense,  'empiricism'  is  the 
method  of  resorting  to  particular  experiences  for 
the  solution  of  philosophical  problems.  Ratio- 
nalists are  the  men  of  principles,  empiricists  the 
men  of  facts.    (Some  Problems  of  Philosophy, 

vii 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

p.  35;  cf.  also,  ibid.,  p.  44;  and  Pragmatism,  pp. 
9,  51.)  Or,  "since  principles  are  universals, 
and  facts  are  particulars,  perhaps  the  best  way 
of  characterizing  the  two  tendencies  is  to  say 
that  rationalist  thinking  proceeds  most  will- 
ingly by  going  from  wholes  to  parts,  while  em- 
piricist thinking  proceeds  by  going  from  parts 
to  wholes."  (Some  Problems  of  Philosophy, 
p.  35;  cf.  also  ibid.,  p.  98;  and  A  Pluralistic 
Universe,  p.  7.)  Again,  empiricism  "remands 
us  to  sensation."  (Op.  cit.,  p.  264.)  The  "em- 
piricist view"  insists  that,  "as  reality  is  cre- 
ated temporally  day  by  day,  concepts  .  .  . 
can  never  fitly  supersede  perception.  .  .  .  The 
deeper  features  of  reality  are  found  only  in 
perceptual  experience."  (Some  Problems  of 
Philosophy,  pp.  100,  97.)  Empiricism  in  this 
sense  is  as  yet  characteristic  of  Professor 
James's  philosophy  as  a  whole.  It  is  not  the 
distinctive! and  independent  doctrine  set  forth 
in  the  present  book. 

The  only  summary  of  'radical  empiricism '  in 
this  last  and  narrowest  sense  appears  in  the 
Preface  to  The  Meaning  of  Truth  (pp.  xii-xiii) ; 

viii 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

and  it  must  be  reprinted  here  as  the  key  to  the 
text  that  follows.1 

"Radical  empiricism  consists  (1)  first  of  a 
postulate,  (2)  next  of  a  statement  of  fact, 
(3)  and  finally  of  a  generalized  conclusion." 

*(1)  "The  postulate  is  that  the  only  things 
that  shall  be  debatable  among  philosophers  shall 
be  things  definable  in  terms  drawn  from  experi- 
ence. (Things  of  an  unexperienceable  nature 
may  exist  ad  libitum,  but  they  form  no  part  of 
the  material  for  philosophic  debate.) "  This  is 
"the  principle  of  pure  experience"  as  "a  meth- 
odical postulate."  (Cf.  below,  pp.  159,  241.) 
This  postulate  corresponds  to  the  notion  which 
the  author  repeatedly  attributes  to  Shadworth 
Hodgson,  the  notion  "that  realities  are  only 
what  they  are  'known  as.'  "  {Pragmatism,  p. 
50;  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  443; 
The  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  43,  118.)  In  this 
sense  '  radical  empiricism '  and  pragmatism  are 
closely  allied.  Indeed,  if  pragmatism  be  defined 
as  the  assertion  that  "the  meaning  of  any  pro- 
position can  always  be  brought  down  to  some 

1  The  use  of  numerals  and  italics  is  introduced  by  the  editor. 
ix 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

particular  consequence  in  our  future  practical 
experience,  .  .  .  the  point  lying  in  the  fact 
that  the  experience  must  be  particular  rather 
than  in  the  fact  that  it  must  be  active" 
(Meaning  of  Truth,  p.  210) ;  then  pragmatism 
and  the  above  postulate  come  to  the  same 
thing.  The  present  book,  however,  consists 
not  so  much  in  the  assertion  of  this  postu- 
late as  in  the  use  of  it.  And  the  method  is 
successful  in  special  applications  by  virtue 
of  a  certain  "statement  of  fact"  concerning 
relations. 

(2)  "The  statement  of  fact  is  that  the  rela- 
tions between  things,  conjunctive  as  well  as  dis- 
junctive, are  just  as  much  matters  of  direct  par- 
ticular experience,  neither  more  so  nor  less  so, 
than  the  things  themselves."  (Cf.  also  A  Plural- 
istic Universe,  p.  280;  The  Will  to  Believe,  p. 
278.)  This  is  the  central  doctrine  of  the  pre- 
sent book.  It  distinguishes  *  radical  empiri- 
cism' from  the  "ordinary  empiricism"  of 
Hume,  J.  S.  Mill, etc.,  with  which  it  is  otherwise 
allied.  (Cf.  below,  pp.  42-44.)  It  provides  an 
empirical  and  relational  version  of  'activity,' 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

and  so  distinguishes  the  author's  voluntarism 
from  a  view  with  which  it  is  easily  confused 
—  the  view  which  upholds  a  pure  or  transcend- 
ent activity.  (Cf.  below,  Essay  VI.)  It  makes 
it  possible  to  escape  the  vicious  disjunctions 
that  have  thus  far  baffled  philosophy:  such 
disjunctions  as  those  between  consciousness 
and  physical  nature,  between  thought  and  its 
object,  between  one  mind  and  another,  and 
between  one  'thing'  and  another.  These  dis- 
junctions need  not  be  'overcome'  by  calling  in 
any  "extraneous  trans-empirical  connective 
support"  (Meaning  of  Truth,  Preface,  p.  xiii); 
they  may  now  be  avoided  by  regarding  the 
dualities  in  question  as  only  differences  of  em- 
pirical relationship  among  common  empirical 
terms.  The  pragmatistic  account  of  'meaning' 
and  'truth,'  shows  only  how  a  vicious  disjunc- 
tion between  'idea'  and  'object'  may  thus  be 
avoided.  The  present  volume  not  only  pre- 
sents pragmatism  in  this  light;  but  adds  simi- 
lar accounts  of  the  other  dualities  mentioned 
above. 
Thus  while  pragmatism  and  radical  empiri- 
xi 


EDITOR'S   PREFACE 

cism  do  not  differ  essentially  when  regarded  as 
methods,  they  are  independent  when  regarded 
as  doctrines.  For  it  would  be  possible  to  hold 
the  pragmatistic  theory  of  *  meaning'  and 
*  truth, 'without  basing  it  on  any  fundamen- 
tal theory  of  relations,  and  without  extending 
such  a  theory  of  relations  to  residual  philo- 
sophical problems;  without,  in  short,  holding 
either  to  the  above  'statement  of  fact,'  or  to 
the  following  'generalized  conclusion.' 

(3)  "The  generalized  conclusion  is  that 
therefore  the  parts  of  experience  hold  together 
from  next  to  next  by  relations  that  are  themselves 
parts  of  experience.  The  directly  apprehended 
universe  needs,  in  short,  no  extraneous  trans- 
empirical  connective  support,  but  possesses  in  its 
own  right  a  concatenated  or  continuous  struc- 
ture." When  thus  generalized,  'radical  em- 
piricism' is  not  only  a  theory  of  knowledge 
comprising  pragmatism  as  a  special  chapter, 
but  a  metaphysic  as  well.  It  excludes  "the 
hypothesis  of  trans-empirical  reality  "  (Cf.  be- 
low, p.  195).   It  is  the  author's  most  rigorous 

statement  of  his  theory  that  reality  is  an  "ex- 

xii 


EDITOE'S   PREFACE 

perience-continuum."  (Meaning  of  Truth,  p. 
152;  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  Lect.  v,  vn.)  It  is 
that  positive  and  constructive  *  empiricism  *  of 
which  Professor  James  said  :  "Let  empiricism 
once  become  associated  with  religion,  as  hith- 
erto, through  some  strange  misunderstanding, 
it  has  been  associated  with  irreligion,  and  I 
believe  that  a  new  era  of  religion  as  well  as  of 
philosophy  will  be  ready  to  begin."  (Op.  cit., 
p.  314;  cf.  ibid.,  Lect.  viii,  passim;  and  The 
Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  pp.  515-527.) 
The  editor  desires  to  acknowledge  his  obli- 
gations to  the  periodicals  from  which  these 
essays  have  been  reprinted,  and  to  the  many 
friends  of  Professor  James  who  have  rendered 
valuable  advice  and  assistance  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  present  volume. 

Ralph  Barton  Perry. 

Caj^bbidge,  Massachusetts. 
January  8,  1912. 


CONTENTS 

I.  Does  'Consciousness'  Exist? 1 

II.  A  World  of  Pure  Experience 39 

III.  The  Thing  and  its  Relations 92 

IV.  How  Two  Minds  Can  Know  One  Thing  .    .  123 

V.  The  Place  of  Affectional  Facts  in  a  World 

of  Pure  Experience 137 

VI.  The  Experience  of  Activity 155 

VII.  The  Essence  of  Humanism       190 

VOL  La  Notion  de  Conscience 206 

IX.  Is  Radical  Empiricism  Solipsistic?  ....  234 

X.  Mr.  Pitkin's  Refutation  of  '  Radical  Empiri- 
cism'      241 

XI.  Humanism  and  Truth  Once  More    ....  244 

Xn.  Absolutism  and  Empiricism 266 

Index 281 


DOES   'CONSCIOUSNESS'   EXIST?1 

'Thoughts'  and  'things'  are  names  for  two 
sorts  of  object,  which  common  sense  will  al- 
ways find  contrasted  and  will  always  practi- 
cally oppose  to  each  other.  Philosophy,  re- 
flecting on  the  contrast,  has  varied  in  the 
past  in  her  explanations  of  it,  and  may  be 
expected  to  vary  in  the  future.  At  first, 
*  spirit  and  matter,'  'soul  and  body,'  stood  for 
a  pair  of  equipollent  substances  quite  on  a  par 
in  weight  and  interest.  But  one  day  Kant  un- 
dermined the  soul  and  brought  in  the  tran- 
scendental ego,  and  ever  since  then  the  bipolar 
relation  has  been  very  much  off  its  balance. 
The  transcendental  ego  seems  nowadays  in 
rationalist  quarters  to  stand  for  everything,  in 
empiricist  quarters  for  almost  nothing.  In  the 
hands  of  such  writers  as  Schuppe,  Rehmke, 
Natorp,  Miinsterberg  —  at  any  rate  in  his 

1  [Reprinted  from  the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scien- 
tific Methods,  vol.  I,  No.  18,  September  1,  1904.  For  the  relation  be- 
tween this  essay  and  those  which  follow,  cf.  below,  pp.  53-54.   Ed.] 

1 


ESSAYS  IN   RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

earlier  writings,  Schubert-Soldern  and  others, 
the  spiritual  principle  attenuates  itself  to  a 
thoroughly  ghostly  condition,  being  only  a 
name  for  the  fact  that  the  *  content'  of  experi- 
ence is  known.  It  loses  personal  form  and  act- 
ivity —  these  passing  over  to  the  content  — 
and  becomes  a  bare  Bewusstheit  or  Bewusstsein 
ilberhaupt,  of  which  in  its  own  right  absolutely 
nothing  can  be  said. 

I  believe  that  *  consciousness/  when  once  it 
has  evaporated  to  this  estate  of  pure  diaphane- 
ity, is  on  the  point  of  disappearing  altogether. 
It  is  the  name  of  a  nonentity,  and  has  no  right 
to  a  place  among  first  principles.  Those  who 
still  cling  to  it  are  clinging  to  a  mere  echo,  the 
faint  rumor  left  behind  by  the  disappearing 
*  soul '  upon  the  air  of  philosophy.  During  the 
past  year,  I  have  read  a  number  of  articles 
whose  authors  seemed  just  on  the  point  of  aban- 
doning the  notion  of  consciousness,1  and  sub- 
stituting for  it  that  of  an  absolute  experience 
not  due  to  two  factors.    But  they  were  not 


1  Articles  by  Baldwin,  Ward,  Bawden,  King,  Alexander  and  others. 
Dr.  Perry  is  frankly  over  the  border. 


DOES   'CONSCIOUSNESS'   EXIST? 

quite  radical  enough,  not  quite  daring  enough 
in  their  negations.  For  twenty  years  past  I 
have  mistrusted  'consciousness'  as  an  entity; 
for  seven  or  eight  years  past  I  have  suggested 
its  non-existence  to  my  students,  and  tried  to 
give  them  its  pragmatic  equivalent  in  reali- 
ties of  experience.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  hour 
is  ripe  for  it  to  be  openly  and  universally  dis- 
carded. 

To  deny  plumply  that  'consciousness'  exists 
seems  so  absurd  on  the  face  of  it  —  for  undeni- 
ably 'thoughts'  do  exist  —  that  I  fear  some 
readers  will  follow  me  no  farther.  Let  me  then 
immediately  explain  that  I  mean  only  to  deny 
that  the  word  stands  for  an  entity,  but  to  insist 
most  emphatically  that  it  does  stand  for  a 
function.  There  is,  I  mean,  no  aboriginal  stuff 
or  quality  of  being,1  contrasted  with  that  of 
which  material  objects  are  made,  out  of  which 
our  thoughts  of  them  are  made;  but  there  is  a 
function  in  experience  which  thoughts  per- 
form, and  for  the  performance  of  which  this 


1  [Similarly,  there  is  no  "activity  of  'consciousness'  as  such."  See 
below,  pp.  170  ff.,  note.  En.] 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

quality  of  being  is  invoked.  That  function  is 
knowing.  'Consciousness*  is  supposed  neces- 
sary to  explain  the  fact  that  things  not  only 
are,  but  get  reported,  are  known.  Whoever 
blots  out  the  notion  of  consciousness  from  his 
list  of  first  principles  must  still  provide  in  some 
way  for  that  function's  being  carried  on. 

I 

My  thesis  is  that  if  we  start  with  the  suppo- 
sition that  there  is  only  one  primal  stuff  or 
material  in  the  world,  a  stuff  of  which  -every- 
thing is  composed,  and  if  we  call  that  stuff 
'pure  experience,'  then  knowing  can  easily  be 
explained  as  a  particular  sort  of  relation 
towards  one  another  into  which  portions  of 
pure  experience  may  enter.  The  relation  itself 
is  a  part  of  pure  experience;  one  of  its  'terms' 
becomes  the  subject  or  bearer  of  the  know- 
ledge, the  knower,1  the  other  becomes  the  ob- 
ject known.  This  will  need  much  explanation 
before  it  can  be  understood.  The  best  way  to 

1  In  my  Psychology  I  have  tried  to  show  that  we  need  no  knower 
other  than  the  'passing  thought.'  [Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp. 
S38  ff.] 

4 


ES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'   EXIST? 

get  it  understood  is  to  contrast  it  with  the  al- 
ternative view;  and  for  that  we  may  take  the 
recentest  alternative,  that  in  which  the  evapo- 
ration of  the  definite  soul-substance  has  pro- 
ceeded as  far  as  it  can  go  without  being  yet 
complete.  If  neo-Kantism  has  expelled  earlier 
forms  of  dualism,  we  shall  have  expelled  all 
forms  if  we  are  able  to  expel  neo-Kantism  in  its 
turn. 

For  the  thinkers  I  call  neo-Kantian,  the  word 
consciousness  to-day  does  no  more  than  signal- 
ize the  fact  that  experience  is  indef easibly  dual- 
istic  in  structure.  It  means  that  not  subject, 
not  object,  but  object-plus-subject  is  the  mini- 
mum that  can  actually  be.  The  subject-object 
distinction  meanwhile  is  entirely  different  from 
that  between  mind  and  matter,  from  that  be- 
tween body  and  soul.  Souls  were  detachable, 
had  separate  destinies;  things  could  happen  to 
them.  To  consciousness  as  such  nothing  can 
happen,  for,  timeless  itself,  it  is  only  a  witness 
of  happenings  in  time,  in  which  it  plays  no 
part.  It  is,  in  a  word,  but  the  logical  correla- 
tive of  'content'  in  an  Experience  of  which  the 

5 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL   EMPIRICISM 

peculiarity  is  that  fact  comes  to  light  in  it,  that 
awareness  oj  content  takes  place.  Consciousness 
as  such  is  entirely  impersonal  —  *  self '  and  its 
activities  belong  to  the  content.  To  say  that  I 
am  self-conscious,  or  conscious  of  putting  forth 
volition,  means  only  that  certain  contents,  for 
which  'self  and  *  effort  of  will'  are  the  names, 
are  not  without  witness  as  they  occur. 

Thus,  for  these  belated  drinkers  at  the  Kant- 
ian spring,  we  should  have  to  admit  conscious- 
ness as  an  '  epistemological '  necessity,  even  if 
we  had  no  direct  evidence  of  its  being  there. 

But  in  addition  to  this,  we  are  supposed  by 
almost  every  one  to  have  an  immediate  con- 
sciousness of  consciousness  itself.  When  the 
world  of  outer  fact  ceases  to  be  materially  pre- 
sent, and  we  merely  recall  it  in  memory,  or 
fancy  it,  the  consciousness  is  believed  to  stand 
out  and  to  be  felt  as  a  kind  of  impalpable  inner 
flowing,  which,  once  known  in  this  sort  of  expe- 
rience, may  equally  be  detected  in  presenta- 
tions of  the  outer  world.  "The  moment  we  try 
to  fix  our  attention  upon  consciousness  and  to 

see  what,  distinctly,  it  is,"  says  a  recent  writer, 

6 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

"it  seems  to  vanish.  It  seems  as  if  we  had  be- 
fore us  a  mere  emptiness.  When  we  try  to  in- 
trospect the  sensation  of  blue,  all  we  can  see  is 
the  blue;  the  other  element  is  as  if  it  were  dia- 
phanous. Yet  it  can  be  distinguished,  if  we 
look  attentively  enough,  and  know  that  there 
is  something  to  look  for."  1  "Consciousness" 
(Bewusstheit),  says  another  philosopher,  "is 
inexplicable  and  hardly  describable,  yet  all  con- 
scious experiences  have  this  in  common  that 
what  we  call  their  content  has  this  peculiar  re- 
ference to  a  centre  for  which  'self '  is  the  name, 
in  virtue  of  which  reference  alone  the  content 
is  subjectively  given,  or  appears.  .  .  .  While 
in  this  way  consciousness,  or  reference  to  a 
self,  is  the  only  thing  which  distinguishes  a  con- 
scious content  from  any  sort  of  being  that 
might  be  there  with  no  one  conscious  of  it,  yet 
this  only  ground  of  the  distinction  defies  all 
closer  explanations.  The  existence  of  conscious- 
ness, although  it  is  the  fundamental  fact  of 
psychology,  can  indeed  be  laid  down  as  cer- 
tain, can  be  brought  out  by  analysis,  but  can 

1  G.  E.  Moore:  Mind,  vol.  xn,  N.  S.,  [1903],  p.  450. 
7 


ESSAYS  IN   RADICAL   EMPIRICISM 

neither  be  defined  nor  deduced  from  anything 
but  itself."1 

'Can  be  brought  out  by  analysis,'  this 
author  says.  This  supposes  that  the  conscious- 
ness is  one  element,  moment,  factor  —  call  it 
what  you  like  —  of  an  experience  of  essentially 
dualistic  inner  constitution,  from  which,  if  you 
abstract  the  content,  the  consciousness  will  re- 
main revealed  to  its  own  eye.  Experience,  at 
this  rate,  would  be  much  like  a  paint  of  which 
the  world  pictures  were  made.  Paint  has  a  dual 
constitution,  involving,  as  it  does,  a  men- 
struum 2  (oil,  size  or  what  not)  and  a  mass  of 
content  in  the  form  of  pigment  suspended 
therein.  We  can  get  the  pure  menstruum  by 
letting  the  pigment  settle,  and  the  pure  pig- 
ment by  pouring  off  the  size  or  oil.  We  operate 
here  by  physical  subtraction;  and  the  usual 
view  is,  that  by  mental  subtraction  we  can 
separate  the  two  factors  of  experience  in  an 

1  Paul  Natorp:  Einleitung  in  a\ie  Psychologie,  1888,  pp.  14,  112. 

2  "Figuratively  speaking,  consciousness  may  be  said  to  be  the  one 
universal  solvent,  or  menstruum,  in  which  the  different  concrete  kinds 
of  psychic  acts  and  facts  are  contained,  whether  in  concealed  or  in 
obvious  form."  G.  T.  Ladd:  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory, 
1894,  p.  30. 

8 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

analogous  way  —  not  isolating  them  entirely, 

but  distinguishing  them  enough  to  know  that 

they  are  two. 

II 

Now  my  contention  is  exactly  the  reverse  of 
this.  Experience,  I  believe,  has  no  such  inner  du- 
plicity; and  the  separation  of  it  into  conscious- 
ness and  content  comes,  not  by  way  of  subtraction, 
but  by  way  of  addition  —  the  addition,  to  a 
given  concrete  piece  of  it,  of  other  sets  of  expe- 
riences, in  connection  with  which  severally  its 
use  or  function  may  be  of  two  different  kinds. 
The  paint  will  also  serve  here  as  an  illustration. 
In  a  pot  in  a  paint-shop,  along  with  other 
paints,  it  serves  in  its  entirety  as  so  much  sale- 
able matter.  Spread  on  a  canvas,  with  other 
paints  around  it,  it  represents,  on  the  contrary, 
a  feature  in  a  picture  and  performs  a  spiritual 
function.  Just  so,  I  maintain,  does  a  given  un- 
divided portion  of  experience,  taken  in  one 
context  of  associates,  play  the  part  of  a  knower, 
of  a  state  of  mind,  of  'consciousness';  while  in 
a  different  context  the  same  undivided  bit  of 
experience  plays  the  part  of  a  thing  known,  of 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

an  objective  'content.'  In  a  word,  in  one  group 
it  figures  as  a  thought,  in  another  group  as  a 
thing.  And,  since  it  can  figure  in  both  groups 
simultaneously  we  have  every  right  to  speak  of 
it  as  subjective  and  objective  both  at  once. 
The  dualism  connoted  by  such  double-bar- 
relled terms  as  'experience/  'phenomenon,' 
'datum,'  'Vorfindung'  —  terms  which,  in  phi- 
losophy at  any  rate,  tend  more  and  more  to  re- 
place the  single-barrelled  terms  of  'thought' 
and  'thing'  —  that  dualism,  I  say,  is  still  pre- 
served in  this  account,  but  reinterpreted,  so 
that,  instead  of  being  mysterious  and  elusive, 
it  becomes  verifiable  and  concrete.  It  is  an  af- 
fair of  relations,  it  falls  outside,  not  inside,  the 
single  experience  considered,  and  can  always 
be  particularized  and  defined. 

The  entering  wedge  for  this  more  concrete 
way  of  understanding  the  dualism  was  fash- 
ioned by  Locke  when  he  made  the  word  '  idea ' 
stand  indifferently  for  thing  and  thought,  and 
by  Berkeley  when  he  said  that  what  common 
sense  means  by  realities  is  exactly  what  the 
philosopher  means  by  ideas.    Neither  Locke 

10 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

nor  Berkeley  thought  his  truth  out  into  perfect 
clearness,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  concep- 
tion I  am  defending  does  little  more  than  con- 
sistently carry  out  the  'pragmatic*  method 
which  they  were  the  first  to  use. 

If  the  reader  will  take  his  own  experiences, 
he  will  see  what  I  mean.  Let  him  begin  with  a 
perceptual  experience,  the  'presentation,'  so 
called,  of  a  physical  object,  his  actual  field  of 
vision,  the  room  he  sits  in,  with  the  book  he  is 
reading  as  its  centre;  and  let  him  for  the  pre- 
sent treat  this  complex  object  in  the  common- 
sense  way  as  being  'really'  what  it  seems  to  be, 
namely,  a  collection  of  physical  things  cut  out 
from  an  environing  world  of  other  physical 
things  with  which  these  physical  things  have 
actual  or  potential  relations.  Now  at  the  same 
time  it  is  just  those  selfsame  things  which  his 
mind,  as  we  say,  perceives;  and  the  whole  phi- 
losophy of  perception  from  Democritus's  time 
downwards  has  been  just  one  long  wrangle  over 
the  paradox  that  what  is  evidently  one  reality 
should  be  in  two  places  at  once,  both  in  outer 

space  and  in  a  person's  mind.    'Represent- 

11 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ative'  theories  of  perception  avoid  the  logical 
paradox,  but  on  the  other  hand  they  violate  the 
reader's  sense  of  life,  which  knows  no  inter- 
vening mental  image  but  seems  to  see  the  room 
and  the  book  immediately  just  as  they  physi- 
cally exist. 

The  puzzle  of  how  the  one  identical  room  can 
be  in  two  places  is  at  bottom  just  the  puzzle  of 
how  one  identical  point  can  be  on  two  lines.  It 
can,  if  it  be  situated  at  their  intersection;  and 
similarly,  if  the  'pure  experience'  of  the  room 
were  a  place  of  intersection  of  two  processes, 
which  connected  it  with  different  groups  of  as- 
sociates respectively,  it  could  be  counted  twice 
over,  as  belonging  to  either  group,  and  spoken 
of  loosely  as  existing  in  two  places,  although  it 
would  remain  all  the  time  a  numerically  single 
thing. 

Well,  the  experience  is  a  member  of  diverse 
processes  that  can  be  followed  away  from  it 
along  entirely  different  lines.  The  one  self- 
identical  thing  has  so  many  relations  to  the 
rest  of  experience  that  you  can  take  it  in  dis- 
parate systems  of  association,  and  treat  it  as 

12 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

belonging  with  opposite  contexts.1  In  one  of 
these  contexts  it  is  your  'field  of  conscious- 
ness'; in  another  it  is  'the  room  in  which  you 
sit,'  and  it  enters  both  contexts  in  its  whole- 
ness, giving  no  pretext  for  being  said  to  attach 
itself  to  consciousness  by  one  of  its  parts  or 
aspects,  and  to  outer  reality  by  another.  What 
are  the  two  processes,  now,  into  which  the 
room-experience  simultaneously  enters  in  this 
way? 

One  of  them  is  the  reader's  personal  bio- 
graphy, the  other  is  the  history  of  the  house  of 
which  the  room  is  part.  _The  presentation,  the 
experience,  the  that  in  short  (for  until  we  have 
decided  what  it  is  it  must  be  a  mere  that)  is  the 
last  term  of  a  train  of  sensations,  emotions, 
decisions,  movements,  classifications,  expect- 
ations, etc.,  ending  in  the  present,  and  the  first 
term  of  a  series  of  similar  'inner'  operations 
extending  into  the  future,  on  the  reader's 
part.  On  the  other  hand,  the  very  same  that 
is  the  terminus  ad  quern  of  a  lot  of  previous 

1  [For  a  parallel  statement  of  this  view,  cf .  the  author's  Meaning  of 
Truth,  p.  49,  note.  Cf.  also  below,  pp.  196-197.  Ed.] 

13 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

physical  operations,  carpentering,  papering, 
furnishing,  warming,  etc.,  and  the  terminus  a 
quo  of  a  lot  of  future  ones,  in  which  it  will  be 
concerned  when  undergoing  the  destiny  of  a 
physical  room.  The  physical  and  the  mental 
operations  form  curiously  incompatible  groups. 
As  a  room,  the  experience  has  occupied  that 
spot  and  had  that  environment  for  thirty 
years.  As  your  field  of  consciousness  it  may 
never  have  existed  until  now.  As  a  room,  at- 
tention will  go  on  to  discover  endless  new  de- 
tails in  it.  As  your  mental  state  merely,  few 
new  ones  will  emerge  under  attention's  eye. 
As  a  room,  it  will  take  an  earthquake,  or  a 
gang  of  men,  and  in  any  case  a  certain  amount 
of  time,  to  destroy  it.  As  your  subjective 
state,  the  closing  of  your  eyes,  or  any  instan- 
taneous play  of  your  fancy  will  suffice.  In  the 
real  world,  fire  will  consume  it.  In  your  mind, 
you  can  let  fire  play  over  it  without  effect.  As 
an  outer  object,  you  must  pay  so  much  a 
month  to  inhabit  it.  As  an  inner  content,  you 
may  occupy  it  for  any  length  of  time  rent-free. 
If,  in  short,  you  follow  it  in  the  mental  direc- 

14 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

tion,  taking  it  along  with  events  of  personal 
biography  solely,  all  sorts  of  things  are  true 
of  it  which  are  false,  and  false  of  it  which  are 
true  if  you  treat  it  as  a  real  thing  experienced, 
follow  it  in  the  physical  direction,  and  relate  it 
to  associates  in  the  outer  world. 

Ill 

So  far,  all  seems  plain  sailing,  but  my  thesis 
will  probably  grow  less  plausible  to  the  reader 
when  I  pass  from  percepts  to  concepts,  or  from 
the  case  of  things  presented  to  that  of  things 
remote.  I  believe,  nevertheless,  that  here  also 
the  same  law  holds  good.  If  we  take  concept- 
ual manifolds,  or  memories,  or  fancies,  they 
also  are  in  their  first  intention  mere  bits  of 
pure  experience,  and,  as  such,  are  single  thats 
which  act  in  one  context  as  objects,  and  in  an- 
other context  figure  as  mental  states.  By  tak- 
ing them  in  their  first  intention,  I  mean  ignor- 
ing their  relation  to  possible  perceptual  ex- 
periences with  which  they  may  be  connected, 
which  they  may  lead  to  and  terminate  in,  and 
which  then  they  may  be  supposed  to  'repre- 

15 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

sent.'  Taking  them  in  this  way  first,  we  con- 
fine the  problem  to  a  world  merely  'thought- 
of '  and  not  directly  felt  or  seen.1  This  world, 
just  like  the  world  of  percepts,  comes  to  us  at 
first  as  a  chaos  of  experiences,  but  lines  of  order 
soon  get  traced.  We  find  that  any  bit  of  it 
which  we  may  cut  out  as  an  example  is  con- 
nected with  distinct  groups  of  associates,  just 
as  our  perceptual  experiences  are,  that  these 
associates  link  themselves  with  it  by  different 
relations,2  and  that  one  forms  the  inner  history 
of  a  person,  while  the  other  acts  as  an  imper- 
sonal 'objective'  world,  either  spatial  and  tem- 
poral, or  else  merely  logical  or  mathematical, 
or  otherwise  'ideal.' 

The  first  obstacle  on  the  part  of  the  reader  to 
seeing  that  these  non-perceptual  experiences 

1  [For  the  author's  recognition  of  "concepts  as  a  co-ordinate 
realm"  of  reality,  cf.  his  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  42,  195,  note;  A  Plural- 
istic Universe,  pp.  339-340;  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  pp.  50-57. 
67-70;  and  below,  p.  16,  note.  Giving  this  view  the  name  'logical 
realism,'  he  remarks  elsewhere  that  his  philosophy  "maybe  regarded 
as  somewhat  eccentric  in  its  attempt  to  combine  logical  realism  with 
an  otherwise  empiricist  mode  of  thought"  {Some  Problems  of  PhilosO' 
phy,  p.  106).    Ed.] 

2  Here  as  elsewhere  the  relations  are  of  course  experienced  rela- 
tions, members  of  the  same  originally  chaotic  manifold  of  non- 
perceptual  experience  of  which  the  related  terms  themselves  are 
parts.  [Cf.  below,  p.  42.] 

16 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

have  objectivity  as  well  as  subjectivity  will 
probably  be  due  to  the  intrusion  into  his  mind 
of  percepts,  that  third  group  of  associates  with 
which  the  non-perceptual  experiences  have  re- 
lations, and  which,  as  a  whole,  they  '  represent/ 
standing  to  them  as  thoughts  to  things.  This 
important  function  of  the  non-perceptual  expe- 
riences complicates  the  question  and  confuses 
it;  for,  so  used  are  we  to  treat  percepts  as 
the  sole  genuine  realities  that,  unless  we  keep 
them  out  of  the  discussion,  we  tend  altogether 
to  overlook  the  objectivity  that  lies  in  non- 
perceptual  experiences  by  themselves.  We 
treat  them,  *  knowing'  percepts  as  they  do,  as 
through  and  through  subjective,  and  say  that 
they  are  wholly  constituted  of  the  stuff  called 
consciousness,  using  this  term  now  for  a  kind 
of  entity,  after  the  fashion  which  I  am  seeking 
to  refute.1 

Abstracting,  then,  from  percepts  altogether, 
what  I  maintain  is,  that  any  single  non-per- 

1  Of  the  representative  function  of  non-perceptual  experience  as  a 
whole,  I  will  say  a  word  in  a  subsequent  article:  it  leads  too  far  into  the 
general  theory  of  knowledge  for  much  to  be  said  about  it  in  a  short 
paper  like  this.   [Cf.  below,  pp.  52  ff .] 

17 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ceptual  experience  tends  to  get  counted  twice 
over,  just  as  a  perceptual  experience  does,  figur- 
ing in  one  context  as  an  object  or  field  of  ob- 
jects, in  another  as  a  state  of  mind :  and  all  this 
without  the  least  internal  self -diremption  on  its 
own  part  into  consciousness  and  content.  It  is 
all  consciousness  in  one  taking;  and,  in  the 
other,  all  content. 

I  find  this  objectivity  of  non-perceptual  ex- 
periences, this  complete  parallelism  in  point  of 
reality  between  the  presently  felt  and  the  re- 
motely thought,  so  well  set  forth  in  a  page  of 
Miinsterberg's  Grundziige,  that  I  will  quote  it 
as  it  stands. 

"I  may  only  think  of  my  objects,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Miinsterberg;  ((yety  in  my  living  thought 
they  stand  before  me  exactly  as  perceived  ob- 
jects would  do,  no  matter  how  different  the  two 
ways  of  apprehending  them  may  be  in  their 
genesis.  The  book  here  lying  on  the  table  before 
me,  and  the  book  in  the  next  room  of  which  I 
think  and  which  I  mean  to  get,  are  both  in  the 
same  sense  given  realities  for  me,  realities 
which  I  acknowledge  and  of  which  I  take  ac- 

18 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

count.  If  you  agree  that  the  perceptual  object 
is  not  an  idea  within  me,  but  that  percept  and 
thing,  as  indistinguishably  one,  are  really  expe- 
rienced there,  outside,  you  ought  not  to  believe 
that  the  merely  thought-of  object  is  hid  away 
inside  of  the  thinking  subject.  The  object  of 
which  I  think,  and  of  whose  existence  I  take 
cognizance  without  letting  it  now  work  upon 
my  senses,  occupies  its  definite  place  in  the 
outer  world  as  much  as  does  the  object  which  I 
directly  see." 

"What  is  true  of  the  here  and  the  there,  is 
also  true  of  the  now  and  the  then.  I  know  of 
the  thing  which  is  present  and  perceived,  but  I 
know  also  of  the  thing  which  yesterday  was 
but  is  no  more,  and  which  I  only  remember. 
Both  can  determine  my  present  conduct,  both 
are  parts  of  the  reality  of  which  I  keep  account. 
It  is  true  that  of  much  of  the  past  I  am  uncer- 
tain, just  as  I  am  uncertain  of  much  of  what 
is  present  if  it  be  but  dimly  perceived.  But  the 
interval  of  time  does  not  in  principle  alter  my 
relation  to  the  object,  does  not  transform  it 
from  an  object  known  into  a  mental  state.  . .  . 

19 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

The  things  in  the  room  here  which  I  survey, 
and  those  in  my  distant  home  of  which  I  think, 
the  things  of  this  minute  and  those  of  my  long- 
vanished  boyhood,'  influence  and  decide  me 
alike,  with  a  reality  which  my  experience  of 
them  directly  feels.  They  both  make  up  my 
real  world,  they  make  it  directly,  they  do  not 
have  first  to  be  introduced  to  me  and  medi- 
ated by  ideas  which  now  and  here  arise 
within  me.  .  .  .  This  not-me  character  of 
my  recollections  and  expectations  does  not 
imply  that  the  external  objects  of  which  I  am 
aware  in  those  experiences  should  necessarily 
be  there  also  for  others.  The  objects  of  dream- 
ers and  hallucinated  persons  are  wholly  with- 
out general  validity.  But  even  were  they  cen- 
taurs and  golden  mountains,  they  still  would 
be  'off  there,'  in  fairy  land,  and  not  'inside'  of 
ourselves."  1 

This  certainly  is  the  immediate,  primary, 
naif,  or  practical  way  of  taking  our  thought-of 
world.  Were  there  no  perceptual  world  to 
serve  as  its  'reductive/  in  Taine's  sense,  by 

1  Mlinsterberg:  Grundziige  der  Psychologie,  vol.  I,  p.  48. 
20 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

being  *  stronger*  and  more  genuinely  'outer* 
(so  that  the  whole  merely  thought-of  world 
seems  weak  and  inner  in  comparison),  our 
world  of  thought  would  be  the  only  world,  and 
would  enjoy  complete  reality  in  our  belief. 
This  actually  happens  in  our  dreams,  and  in 
our  day-dreams  so  long  as  percepts  do  not 
interrupt  them. 

And  yet,  just  as  the  seen  room  (to  go  back  to 
our  late  example)  is  also  a  field  of  conscious- 
ness, so  the  conceived  or  recollected  room  is 
also  a  state  of  mind ;  and  the  doubling-up  of  the 
experience  has  in  both  cases  similar  grounds. 

The  room  thought-of,  namely,  has  many 
thought-of  couplings  with  many  thought-of 
things.  Some  of  these  couplings  are  inconstant, 
others  are  stable.  In  the  reader's  personal  his- 
tory the  room  occupies  a  single  date  —  he  saw 
it  only  once  perhaps,  a  year  ago.  Of  the  house's 
history,  on  the  other  hand,  it  forms  a  perma- 
nent ingredient.  Some  couplings  have  the  curi- 
ous stubbornness,  to  borrow  Royce's  term,  of 
fact;  others  show  the  fluidity  of  fancy  —  we  let 
them  come  and  go  as  we  please.  Grouped  with 

21 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

the  rest  of  its  house,  with  the  name  of  its  town, 
of  its  owner,  builder,  value,  decorative  plan, 
the  room  maintains  a  definite  foothold,  to 
which,  if  we  try  to  loosen  it,  it  tends  to  return, 
and  to  reassert  itself  with  force.1  With  these 
associates,  in  a  word,  it  coheres,  while  to  other 
houses,  other  towns,  other  owners,  etc.,  it  shows 
no  tendency  to  cohere  at  all.  The  two  collec- 
tions, first  of  its  cohesive,  and,  second,  of  its 
loose  associates,  inevitably  come  to  be  con- 
trasted. We  call  the  first  collection  the  system 
of  external  realities,  in  the  midst  of  which  the 
room,  as  'real/  exists;  the  other  we  call  the 
stream  of  our  internal  thinking,  in  which,  as  a 
*  mental  image/  it  for  a  moment  floats.2  The 
room  thus  again  gets  counted  twice  over.  It 
plays  two  different  roles,  being  Gedanke  and 
Gedachtes,  the  thought-of-an-object,  and  the 
object-thought-of,  both  in  one;  and  all  this 
without  paradox  or  mystery,  just  as  the  same 

1  Cf.  A.  L.  Hodder:  The  Adversaries  of  the  Sceptic,  pp.  94-99. 

2  For  simplicity's  sake  I  confine  my  exposition  to  'external'  reality. 
But  there  is  also  the  system  of  ideal  reality  in  which  the  room  plays  its 
part.  Relations  of  comparison,  of  classification,  serial  order,  value, 
also  are  stubborn,  assign  a  definite  place  to  the  room,  unlike  the  inco- 
herence of  its  places  in  the  mere  rhapsody  of  our  successive  thoughts. 
[Cf.  above,  p.  16.] 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

material  thing  may  be  both  low  and  high,  or 
small  and  great,  or  bad  and  good,  because  of  its 
relations  to  opposite  parts  of  an  environing 
world. 

As  *  subjective'  we  say  that  the  experience 
represents;  as  'objective'  it  is  represented. 
What  represents  and  what  is  represented  is  here 
numerically  the  same;  but  we  must  remember 
that  no  dualism  of  being  represented  and  re- 
presenting resides  in  the  experience  per  se.  In 
its  pure  state,  or  when  isolated,  there  is  no  self- 
splitting  of  it  into  consciousness  and  what  the 
consciousness  is  'of.'  Its  subjectivity  and  ob- 
jectivity are  functional  attributes  solely,  real- 
ized only  when  the  experience  is  'taken,'  i.  e., 
talked-of,  twice,  considered  along  with  its  two 
differing  contexts  respectively,  by  a  new  retro- 
spective experience,  of  which  that  whole  past 
complication  now  forms  the  fresh  content. 

The  instant  field  of  the  present  is  at  all  times 
what  I  call  the  'pure'  experience.  It  is  only 
virtually  or  potentially  either  object  or  subject 
as  yet.  For  the  time  being,  it  is  plain,  unquali- 
fied actuality,  or  existence,  a  simple  that.  In  this 

23 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

naif  immediacy  it  is  of  course  valid;  it  is  there, 
we  act  upon  it;  and  the  doubling  of  it  in  retro- 
spection into  a  state  of  mind  and  a  reality  in- 
tended thereby,  is  just  one  of  the  acts.  The 
*  state  of  mind,'  first  treated  explicitly  as  such 
in  retrospection,  will  stand  corrected  or  con- 
firmed, and  the  retrospective  experience  in  its 
turn  will  get  a  similar  treatment;  but  the  im- 
mediate experience  in  its  passing  is  always 
'truth,'  1  practical  truth,  something  to  act  on,  at 
its  own  movement.  If  the  world  were  then  and 
there  to  go  out  like  a  candle,  it  would  remain 
truth  absolute  and  objective,  for  it  would  be 
'the  last  word,'  would  have  no  critic,  and  no 
one  would  ever  oppose  the  thought  in  it  to  the 
reality  intended.2 

I  think  I  may  now  claim  to  have  made  my 

1  Note  the  ambiguity  of  this  term,  which  is  taken  sometimes 
objectively  and  sometimes  subjectively. 

2  In  the  Psychological  Review  for  July  [1904],  Dr.  R.  B.  Perry  has 
published  a  view  of  Consciousness  which  comes  nearer  to  mine  than 
any  other  with  which  I  am  acquainted.  At  present,  Dr.  Perry  thinks, 
every  field  of  experience  is  so  much  'fact.'  It  becomes  'opinion'  or 
'thought'  only  in  retrospection,  when  a  fresh  experience,  thinking  the 
same  object,  alters  and  corrects  it.  But  the  corrective  experience 
becomes  itself  in  turn  corrected,  and  thus  experience  as  a  whole  is  a 
process  in  which  what  is  objective  originally  forever  turns  subjective, 
turns  into  our  apprehension  of  the  object.  I  strongly  recommend 
Dr.  Perry's  admirable  article  to  my  readers. 

24 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS*  EXIST? 

thesis  clear.  Consciousness  connotes  a  kind  of 
external  relation,  and  does  not  denote  a  special 
stuff  or  way  of  being.  The  'peculiarity  of  our  ex- 
periences, that  they  not  only  are,  but  are  known, 
which  their  'conscious'  quality  is  invoked  to 
explain,  is  better  explained  by  their  relations  — 
these  relations  themselves  being  experiences  —  to 
one  another, 

IV  * 

Were  I  now  to  go  on  to  treat  of  the  knowing 
of  perceptual  by  conceptual  experiences,  it 
would  again  prove  to  be  an  affair  of  external 
relations.  One  experience  would  be  the  knower, 
the  other  the  reality  known;  and  I  could 
perfectly  well  define,  without  the  notion  of 
*  consciousness/  what  the  knowing  actually 
and  practically 'amounts  to — leading-to  wards, 
namely,  and  terminating-in  percepts,  through 
a  series  of  transitional  experiences  which  the 
world  supplies.  But  I  will  not  treat  of  this, 
space  being  insufficient.1  I  will  rather  consider 

1  I  have  given  a  partial  account  of  the  matter  in  Mind,  vol.  x,  p.  27, 
1885  [reprinted  in  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  1-42],  and  in  the 
Psychological  Review,  vol.  n,  p.  105,  1895  [partly  reprinted  in  The 
Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  43-50].  See  also  C.  A.  Strong's  article  in  the 

25 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

a  few  objections  that  are  sure  to  be  urged 
against  the  entire  theory  as  it  stands. 


First  of  all,  this  will  be  asked:  "If  experience 
has  not  'conscious*  existence,  if  it  be  not 
partly  made  of  'consciousness/  of  what  then 
is  it  made?  Matter  we  know,  and  thought  we 
know,  and  conscious  content  we  know,  but 
neutral  and  simple  'pure  experience'  is  some- 
thing we  know  not  at  all.  Say  what  it  consists 
of  —  for  it  must  consist  of  something  —  or  be 
willing  to  give  it  up!" 

To  this  challenge  the  reply  is  easy.  Although 
for  fluency's  sake  I  myself  spoke  early  in  this 
article  of  a  stuff  of  pure  experience,  I  have  now 
to  say  that  there  is  no  general  stuff  of  which  ex- 
perience at  large  is  made.  There  are  as  many 
stuffs  as  there  are  'natures'  in  the  things  expe- 
rienced. If  you  ask  what  any  one  bit  of  pure 
experience  is  made  of,  the  answer  is  always  the 

Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods,  vol.  i,  p. 
253,  May  12,  1904.  I  hope  myself  very  soon  to  recur  to  the  matter. 
[See  below,  pp.  52  ff .] 

26 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

same :  "It  is  made  of  that,  of  just  what  appears, 
of  space,  of  intensity,  of  flatness,  brownness, 
heaviness,  or  what  not."  Shadworth  Hodg- 
son's analysis  here  leaves  nothing  to  be  de- 
sired.1 Experience  is  only  a  collective  name 
for  all  these  sensible  natures,  and  save  for  time 
and  space  (and,  if  you  like,  for  *  being ')  there 
appears  no  universal  element  of  which  all 
things  are  made. 

VI 

The  next  objection  is  more  formidable,  in 
fact  it  sounds  quite  crushing  when  one  hears 
it  first. 

"If  it  be  the  self -same  piece  of  pure  ex- 
perience, taken  twice  over,  that  serves  now  as 
thought  and  now  as  thing"  —  so  the  objec- 
tion runs  —  "how  comes  it  that  its  attributes 
should  differ  so  fundamentally  in  the  two  tak- 
ings. As  thing,  the  experience  is  extended;  as 
thought,  it  occupies  no  space  or  place.  As 
thing,  it  is  red,  hard,  heavy;  but  who  ever  heard 

1  [Cf.  Shadworth  Hodgson:  The  Metaphysic  of  Experience,  vol.  I, 
passim ;  The  Philosophy  of  Reflection,  bk.  ii,  ch.  iv,  §  3.  Ed.] 

27 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

of  a  red,  hard  or  heavy  thought  ?  Yet  even 
now  you  said  that  an  experience  is  made  of 
just  what  appears,  and  what  appears  is  just 
such  adjectives.  How  can  the  one  experience 
in  its  thing-function  be  made  of  them,  consist 
of  them,  carry  them  as  its  own  attributes,  while 
in  its  thought-function  it  disowns  them  and 
attributes  them  elsewhere.  There  is  a  self-con- 
tradiction here  from  which  the  radical  dualism 
of  thought  and  thing  is  the  only  truth  that  can 
save  us.  Only  if  the  thought  is  one  kind  of 
being  can  the  adjectives  exist  in  it  'intention- 
ally '  (to  use  the  scholastic  term) ;  only  if  the 
thing  is  another  kind,  can  they  exist  in  it  con- 
stitutively  and  energetically.  No  simple  sub- 
ject can  take  the  same  adjectives  and  at  one 
time  be  qualified  by  it,  and  at  another  time  be 
merely  'of  it,  as  of  something  only  meant  or 
known." 

The  solution  insisted  on  by  this  objector,  like 
many  other  common-sense  solutions,  grows 
the  less  satisfactory  the  more  one  turns  it  in 
one's  mind.  To  begin  with,  are  thought  and 
thing  as  heterogeneous  as  is  commonly  said  ? 

28 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

No  one  denies  that  they  have  some  categories 
in  common.  Their  relations  to  time  are  iden- 
tical. Both,  moreover,  may  have  parts  (for 
psychologists  in  general  treat  thoughts  as  hav- 
ing them) ;  and  both  may  be  complex  or  simple. 
Both  are  of  kinds,  can  be  compared,  added  and 
subtracted  and  arranged  in  serial  orders.  All 
sorts  of  adjectives  qualify  our  thoughts  which 
appear  incompatible  with  consciousness,  being 
as  such  a  bare  diaphaneity.  For  instance,  they 
are  natural  and  easy,  or  laborious.  They  are 
beautiful,  happy,  intense,  interesting,  wise, 
idiotic,  focal,  marginal,  insipid,  confused, 
vague,  precise,  rational,  casual,  general,  par- 
ticular, and  many  things  besides.  Moreover, 
the  chapters  on  *  Perception'  in  the  psycho- 
logy-books are  full  of  facts  that  make  for  the 
essential  homogeneity  of  thought  with  thing. 
How,  if  ' subject'  and  'object'  were  separated 
'by  the  whole  diameter  of  being,'  and  had  no 
attributes  in  common,  could  it  be  so  hard  to 
tell,  in  a  presented  and  recognized  material 
object,  what  part  comes  in  through  the  sense- 
organs  and  what  part  comes  'out  of  one's  own 

29 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

head'?  Sensations  and  apperceptive  ideas  fuse 
here  so  intimately  that  you  can  no  more  tell 
where  one  begins  and  the  other  ends,  than  you 
can  tell,  in  those  cunning  circular  panoramas 
that  have  lately  been  exhibited,  where  the  real 
foreground  and  the  painted  canvas  join  to- 
gether.1 

Descartes  for  the  first  time  defined  thought 
as  the  absolutely  unextended,  and  later  philo- 
sophers have  accepted  the  description  as  cor- 
rect. But  what  possible  meaning  has  it  to  say 
that,  when  we  think  of  a  foot-rule  or  a  square 
yard,  extension  is  not  attributable  to  our 
thought?  Of  every  extended  object  the  ade- 
quate mental  picture  must  have  all  the  exten- 
sion of  the  object  itself.  The  difference  be- 
tween objective  and  subjective  extension  is 
one  of  relation  to  a  context  solely.  In  the  mind 
the  various  extents  maintain  no  necessarily 
stubborn  order  relatively  to  each  other,  while 

1  Spencer's  proof  of  his  'Trans6gured  Realism'  (his  doctrine  that 
there  is  an  absolutely  non-mental  reality)  comes  to  mind  as  a  splendid 
instance  of  the  impossibility  of  establishing  radical  heterogeneity 
between  thought  and  thing.  All  his  painfully  accumulated  points  of 
difference  run  gradually  into  their  opposites,  and  are  full  of  excep- 
tions. [Cf.  Spencer:  Principles  of  Psychology,  part  vn,  ch.  xix.] 

30 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

in  the  physical  world  they  bound  each  other 
stably,  and,  added  together,  make  the  great 
enveloping  Unit  which  we  believe  in  and  call 
real  Space.  As  'outer,'  they  carry  themselves 
adversely,  so  to  speak,  to  one  another,  exclude 
one  another  and  maintain  their  distances; 
while,  as  'inner,'  their  order  is  loose,  and  they 
form  a  durcheinander  in  which  unity  is  lost.1 
But  to  argue  from  this  that  inner  experience  is 
absolutely  inextensive  seems  to  me  little  short 
of  absurd.  The  two  worlds  differ,  not  by  the 
presence  or  absence  of  extension,  but  by  the 
relations  of  the  extensions  which  in  both 
worlds  exist. 

Does  not  this  case  of  extension  now  put  us 
on  the  track  of  truth  in  the  case  of  other  quali- 
ties? It  does;  and  I  am  surprised  that  the  facts 
should  not  have  been  noticed  long  ago.  Why, 
for  example,  do  we  call  a  fire  hot,  and  water 
wet,  and  yet  refuse  to  say  that  our  mental 
state,  when  it  is  'of '  these  objects,  is  either  wet 
or  hot?  'Intentionally,'  at  any  rate,  and  when 

1  I  speak  here  of  the  complete  inner  life  in  which  the  mind  plays 
freely  with  its  materials.  Of  course  the  mind's  free  play  is  restricted 
when  it  seeks  to  copy  real  things  in  real  space. 

31 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

the  mental  state  is  a  vivid  image,  hotness  and 
wetness  are  in  it  just  as  much  as  they  are  in  the 
physical  experience.  The  reason  is  this,  that, 
as  the  general  chaos  of  all  our  experiences  gets 
sifted,  we  find  that  there  are  some  fires  that 
will  always  burn  sticks  and  always  warm  our 
bodies,  and  that  there  are  some  waters  that 
will  always  put  out  fires ;  while  there  are  other 
fires  and  waters  that  will  not  act  at  all.  The 
general  group  of  experiences  that  act,  that  do 
not  only  possess  their  natures  intrinsically,  but 
wear  them  adjectively  and  energetically,  turn- 
ing them  against  one  another,  comes  inevitably 
to  be  contrasted  with  the  group  whose  mem- 
bers, having  identically  the  same  natures,  fail 
to  manifest  them  in  the  'energetic'  way.1  I 
make  for  myself  now  an  experience  of  blazing 
fire;  I  place  it  near  my  body;  but  it  does  not 
warm  me  in  the  least.  I  lay  a  stick  upon  it,  and 
the  stick  either  burns  or  remains  green,  as  I 
please.  I  call  up  water,  and  pour  it  on  the  fire, 
and  absolutely  no  difference  ensues.  I  account 

1  [But  there  are  also  "mental  activity  trains,"  in  which  thoughts 
do  "  work  on  each  other."  Cf.  below,  p.  184,  note.  Ed.] 

32 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

for  all  such  facts  by  calling  this  whole  train 
of  experiences  unreal,  a  mental  train.  Mental 
fire  is  what  won't  burn  real  sticks;  mental  wa- 
ter is  what  won't  necessarily  (though  of  course 
it  may)  put  out  even  a  mental  fire.  Mental 
knives  may  be  sharp,  but  they  won't  cut  real 
wood.  Mental  triangles  are  pointed,  but  their 
points  won't  wound.  With  'real'  objects,  on 
the  contrary,  consequences  always  accrue;  and 
thus  the  real  experiences  get  sifted  from  the 
mental  ones,  the  things  from  our  thoughts  of 
them,  fanciful  or  true,  and  precipitated  to- 
gether as  the  stable  part  of  the  whole  experi- 
ence-chaos, under  the  name  of  the  physical 
world.  Of  this  our  perceptual  experiences  are 
the  nucleus,  they  being  the  originally  strong 
experiences.  We  add  a  lot  of  conceptual  expe- 
riences to  them,  making  these  strong  also  in 
imagination,  and  building  out  the  remoter 
parts  of  the  physical  world  by  their  means; 
and  around  this  core  of  reality  the  world 
of  laxly  connected  fancies  and  mere  rhapso- 
dical objects  floats  like  a  bank  of  clouds. 
In  the  clouds,  all  sorts  of  rules  are  violated 

33 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

which  in  the  core  are  kept.  Extensions  there 
can  be  indefinitely  located;  motion  there  obeys 
no  Newton's  laws. 

VII 

There  is  a  peculiar  class  of  experiences  to 
which,  whether  we  take  them  as  subjective  or 
as  objective,  we  assign  their  several  natures  as 
attributes,  because  in  both  contexts  they  affect 
their  associates  actively,  though  in  neither 
quite  as  'strongly'  or  as  sharply  as  things  af- 
fect one  another  by  their  physical  energies.  I 
refer  here  to  appreciations,  which  form  an  am- 
biguous sphere  of  being,  belonging  with  emotion 
on  the  one  hand,  and  having  objective  'value' 
on  the  other,  yet  seeming  not  quite  inner  nor 
quite  outer,  as  if  a  diremption  had  begun  but 
had  not  made  itself  complete.1 

Experiences  of  painful  objects,  for  example, 
are  usually  also  painful  experiences;  percep- 
tions of  loveliness,  of  ugliness,  tend  to  pass 
muster  as  lovely  or  as  ugly  perceptions;  intui- 
tions of  the  morally  lofty  are  lofty  intuitions. 

1  [This  topic  is  resumed  below,  pp.  137  ff .  Ed.] 
34 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

Sometimes  the  adjective  wanders  as  if  uncer- 
tain where  to  fix  itself.  Shall  we  speak  of 
seductive  visions  or  of  visions  of  seductive 
things?  Of  wicked  desires  or  of  desires  for 
wickedness  ?]  Of  healthy  thoughts  or  of  thoughts 
of  healthy  objects?  Of  good  impulses,  or  of 
impulses  towards  the  good?  Of  feelings  of 
anger,  or  of  angry  feelings?  Both  in  the  mind 
and  in  the  thing,  these  natures  modify  their 
context,  exclude  certain  associates  and  deter- 
mine others,  have  their  mates  and  incompati- 
bles.  Yet  not  as  stubbornly  as  in  the  case  of 
physical  qualities,  for  beauty  and  ugliness, 
love  and  hatred,  pleasant  and  painful  can,  in 
certain  complex  experiences,  coexist. 

If  one  were  to  make  an  evolutionary  con- 
struction of  how  a  lot  of  originally  chaotic  pure 
experiences  became  gradually  differentiated 
into  an  orderly  inner  and  outer  world,  the 
whole  theory  would  turn  upon  one's  success  in 
explaining  how  or  why  the  quality  of  an  expe- 
rience, once  active,  could  become  less  so,  and, 
from  being  an  energetic  attribute  in  some 
cases,  elsewhere  lapse  into  the  status  of  an 

35 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

inert  or  merely  internal  *  nature.'  This  would 
be  the  'evolution'  of  the  psychical  from  the 
bosom  of  the  physical,  in  which  the  esthetic, 
moral  and  otherwise  emotional  experiences 
would  represent  a  halfway  stage. 

VIII 

But  a  last  cry  of  non  possumus  will  probably 
go  up  from  many  readers.  "All  very  pretty  as 
a  piece  of  ingenuity,"  they  will  say, "but  our 
consciousness  itself  intuitively  contradicts  you. 
We,  for  our  part,  know  that  we  are  conscious. 
We  feel  our  thought,  flowing  as  a  life  within  us, 
in  absolute  contrast  with  the  objects  which  it 
so  unremittingly  escorts.  We  can  not  be  faith- 
less to  this  immediate  intuition.  The  dualism 
is  a  fundamental  datum:  Let  no  man  join  what 
God  has  put  asunder." 

My  reply  to  this  is  my  last  word,  and  I 
greatly  grieve  that  to  many  it  will  sound  ma- 
terialistic. I  can  not  help  that,  however,  for 
I,  too,  have  my  intuitions  and  I  must  obey 
them.  Let  the  case  be  what  it  may  in  others,  I 
am  as  confident  as  I  am  of  anything  that,  in 

36 


DOES  'CONSCIOUSNESS'  EXIST? 

myself,  the  stream  of  thinking  (which  I  recog- 
nize emphatically  as  a  phenomenon)  is  only  a 
careless  name  for  what,  when  scrutinized,  re- 
veals itself  to  consist  chiefly  of  the  stream  of 
my  breathing.  The  '  I  think '  which  Kant  said 
must  be  able  to  accompany  all  my  objects,  is 
the  'I  breathe'  which  actually  does  accom- 
pany them.  There  are  other  internal  facts 
besides  breathing  (intracephalic  muscular  ad- 
justments, etc.,  of  which  I  have  said  a  word  in 
my  larger  Psychology) ,  and  these  increase  the 
assets  of  'consciousness,'  so  far  as  the  latter  is 
subject  to  immediate  perception;  *  but  breath, 
which  was  ever  the  original  of  '  spirit,'  breath 
moving  outwards,  between  the  glottis  and  the 
nostrils,  is,  I  am  persuaded,  the  essence  out  of 
which  philosophers  have  constructed  the  en- 
tity known  to  them  as  consciousness.  That 
entity  is  fictitious,  while  thoughts  in  the  concrete 
are  fully  real.  But  thoughts  in  the  concrete  are 
made  of  the  same  stuff  as  things  are. 

I  wish  I  might  believe  myself  to  have  made 


1  [Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp.  299-305.  Cf.  below,  pp.  169- 
171  (note).] 

37 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

that  plausible  in  this  article.  In  another  article 
I  shall  try  to  make  the  general  notion  of  a 
world  composed  of  pure  experiences  still  mgre 
clear. 


II 

A  WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERI- 
ENCE1 

It  is  difficult  not  to  notice  a  curious  unrest  in 
the  philosophic  atmosphere  of  the  time,  a 
loosening  of  old  landmarks,  a  softening  of  op- 
positions, a  mutual  borrowing  from  one  an- 
other on  the  part  of  systems  anciently  closed, 
and  an  interest  in  new  suggestions,  however 
vague,  as  if  the  one  thing  sure  were  the  inade- 
quacy of  the  extant  school-solutions.  The  dis- 
satisfaction with  these  seems  due  for  the  most 
part  to  a  feeling  that  they  are  too  abstract  and 
academic.  Life  is  confused  and  superabundant, 
and  what  the  younger  generation  appears  to 
crave  is  more  of  the  temperament  of  life  in  its 
philosophy,  even  though  it  were  at  some  cost 
of  logical  rigor  and  of  formal  purity.    Tran- 

1  [Reprinted  from  the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scien- 
tific Methods,  vol.  i,  1904,  No.  20,  September  29,  and  No.  21,  October 
13.  Pp.  52-76  have  also  been  reprinted,  with  some  omissions,  alter- 
ations and  additions,  jn  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  102-120.  The 
alterations  have  been  adopted  in  the  present  text.  This  essay  is  re- 
ferred to  in  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  280,  note  5.   Ed.] 

39 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

scendental  idealism  is  inclining  to  let  the  world 
wag  incomprehensibly,  in  spite  of  its  Absolute 
Subject  and  his  unity  of  purpose.  Berkeley  an 
idealism  is  abandoning  the  principle  of  parsi- 
mony and  dabbling  in  panpsychic  specula- 
tions. Empiricism  flirts  with  teleology;  and, 
strangest  of  all,  natural  realism,  so  long  de- 
cently buried,  raises  its  head  above  the  turf, 
and  finds  glad  hands  outstretched  from  the 
most  unlikely  quarters  to  help  it  to  its  feet 
again.  We  are  all  biased  by  our  personal  feel- 
ings, I  know,  and  I  am  personally  discontented 
with  extant  solutions;  so  I  seem  to  read  the 
signs  of  a  great  unsettlement,  as  if  the  up- 
heaval of  more  real  conceptions  and  more  fruit- 
ful methods  were  imminent,  as  if  a  true  land- 
scape might  result,  less  clipped,  straight-edged 
and  artificial. 

If  philosophy  be  really  on  the  eve  of  any  con- 
siderable rearrangement,  the  time  should  be 
propitious  for  any  one  who  has  suggestions  of 
his  own  to  bring  forward.  For  many  years  past 
my  mind  has  been  growing  into  a  certain  type 

of  Weltanschauung.  Rightly  or  wrongly,  I  have 

40 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

got  to  the  point  where  I  can  hardly  see  things 
in  any  other  pattern.  I  propose,  therefore,  to 
describe  the  pattern  as  clearly  as  I  can  con- 
sistently with  great  brevity,  and  to  throw  my 
description  into  the  bubbling  vat  of  publicity 
where,  jostled  by  rivals  and  torn  by  critics,  it 
will  eventually  either  disappear  from  notice, 
or  else,  if  better  luck  befall  it,  quietly  subside 
to  the  profundities,  and  serve  as  a  possible 
ferment  of  new  growths  or  a  nucleus  of  new 
crystallization. 

I.   Radical  Empiricism 

I  give  the  name  of  *  radical  empiricism'  to 
my  Weltanschauung.  Empiricism  is  known  as 
the  opposite  of  rationalism.  Rationalism  tends 
to  emphasize  universals  and  to  make  wholes 
prior  to  parts  in  the  order  of  logic  as  well  as  in 
that  of  being.  Empiricism,  on  the  contrary, 
lays  the  explanatory  stress  upon  the  part,  the 
element,  the  individual,  and  treats  the  whole 
as  a  collection  and  the  universal  as  an  abstrac- 
tion. My  description  of  things,  accordingly, 
starts  with  the  parts  and  makes  of  the  whole 

41 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

a  being  of  the  second  order.  It  is  essentially 
a  mosaic  philosophy,  a  philosophy  of  plural 
facts,  like  that  of  Hume  and  his  descendants, 
who  refer  these  facts  neither  to  Substances  in 
which  they  inhere  nor  to  an  Absolute  Mind 
that  creates  them  as  its  objects.  But  it  differs 
from  the  Humian  type  of  empiricism  in  one 
particular  which  makes  me  add  the  epithet 
radical. 

To  be  radical,  an  empiricism  must  neither 
admit  into  its  constructions  any  element  that 
is  not  directly  experienced,  nor  exclude  from 
them  any  element  that  is  directly  experienced. 
For  such  a  philosophy,  the  relations  that  connect 
experiences  must  themselves  be  experienced  rela- 
tions, and  any  hind  of  relation  experienced  must 
be  accounted  as  (reaV  as  anything  else  in  the 
system.  Elements  may  indeed  be  redistributed, 
the  original  placing  of  things  getting  corrected, 
but  a  real  place  must  be  found  for  every  kind 
of  thing  experienced,  whether  term  or  relation, 
in  the  final  philosophic  arrangement. 

Now,  ordinary  empiricism,  in  spite  of  the 

fact  that  conjunctive  and  disjunctive  relations 

42 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

present  themselves  as  being  fully  co-ordinate 
parts  of  experience,  has  always  shown  a  ten- 
dency to  do  away  with  the  connections  of 
things,  and  to  insist  most  on  the  disjunctions. 
Berkeley's  nominalism,  Hume's  statement  that 
whatever  things  we  distinguish  are  as  *  loose 
and  separate '  as  if  they  had  'no  manner  of  con- 
nection,' James  Mill's  denial  that  similars  have 
anything  'really'  in  common,  the  resolution 
of  the  causal  tie  into  habitual  sequence,  John 
Mill's  account  of  both  physical  things  and 
selves  as  composed  of  discontinuous  possibili- 
ties, and  the  general  pulverization  of  all  Ex- 
perience by  association  and  the  mind-dust 
theory,  are  examples  of  what  I  mean.1 

The  natural  result  of  such  a  world-picture 
has  been  the  efforts  of  rationalism  to  correct 
its  incoherencies  by  the  addition  of  trans- 
experiential  agents  of  unification,  substances, 
intellectual  categories  and  powers,  or  Selves; 

1  [Cf.  Berkeley:  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  Introduction; 
Hume:  An  Enquiry  Concerning  Human  Understanding,  sect,  vii, 
part  ii  (Selby-Bigge's  edition,  p.  74);  James  Mill:  Analysis  of  the 
Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind,ch.  vm;  J.  S.  Mill:  An  Examinationqf 
Sir  William  Hamilton  s  Philosophy,  ch.  xi,  xii;  W.  K.  Clifford:  Lec- 
tures and  Essays,  pp.  274  ff.] 

43 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

whereas,  if  empiricism  had  only  been  radical 
and  taken  everything  that  comes  without  dis- 
favor, conjunction  as  well  as  separation,  each 
at  its  face  value,  the  results  would  have  called 
for  no  such  artificial  correction.  Radical  em- 
piricism, as  I  understand  it,  does  full  justice  to 
conjunctive  relations,  without,  however,  treat- 
ing them  as  rationalism  always  tends  to  treat 
them,  as  being  true  in  some  supernal  way,  as  if 
the  unity  of  things  and  their  variety  belonged 
to  different  orders  of  truth  and  vitality  alto- 
gether. 

II.   Conjunctive  Relations 

Relations  are  of  different  degrees  of  inti- 
macy. Merely  to  be  'with'  one  another  in  a 
universe  of  discourse  is  the  most  external  rela- 
tion that  terms  can  have,  and  seems  to  involve 
nothing  whatever  as  to  farther  consequences. 
Simultaneity  and  time-interval  come  next,  and 
then  space-adjacency  and  distance.  After 
them,  similarity  and  difference,  carrying  the 
possibility  of  many  inferences.  Then  relations 
of  activity,  tying  terms  into  series  involving 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

change,  tendency,  resistance,  and  the  causal 
order  generally.  Finally,  the  relation  experi- 
enced between  terms  that  form  states  of  mind, 
and  are  immediately  conscious  of  continuing 
each  other.  The  organization  of  the  Self  as  a 
system  of  memories,  purposes,  strivings,  ful- 
filments or  disappointments,  is  incidental  to 
this  most  intimate  of  all  relations,  the  terms 
of  which  seem  in  many  cases  actually  to  com- 
penetrate  and  suffuse  each  other's  being.1 

Philosophy  has  always  turned  on  grammati- 
cal particles.  With,  near,  next,  like,  from, 
towards,  against,  because,  for,  through,  my  — 
these  words  designate  types  of  conjunctive 
relation  arranged  in  a  roughly  ascending  order 
of  intimacy  and  inclusiveness.  A  priori,  we  can 
imagine  a  universe  of  withness  but  no  nextness; 
or  one  of  nextness  but  no  likeness,  or  of  likeness 
with  no  activity,  or  of  activity  with  no  pur- 
pose, or  of  purpose  with  no  ego.  These  would 
be  universes,  each  with  its  own  grade  of  unity. 
The  universe  of  human  experience  is,  by  one  or 
another  of  its  parts,  of  each  and  all  these  grades. 

1  [See  "The  Experience  of  Activity,"  below,  pp.  155-189.] 
45 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

Whether  or  not  it  possibly  enjoys  some  still 
more  absolute  grade  of  union  does  not  appear 
upon  the  surface. 

Taken  as  it  does  appear,  our  universe  is  to  a 
large  extent  chaotic.  No  one  single  type  of  con- 
nection runs  through  all  the  experiences  that 
compose  it.  If  we  take  space-relations,  they 
fail  to  connect  minds  into  any  regular  system. 
Causes  and  purposes  obtain  only  among  spe- 
cial series  of  facts.  The  self -relation  seems 
extremely  limited  and  does  not  link  two  differ- 
ent selves  together.  Prima  facie,  if  you  should 
liken  the  universe  of  absolute  idealism  to  an 
aquarium,  a  crystal  globe  in  which  goldfish 
are  swimming,  you  would  have  to  compare  the 
empiricist  universe  to  something  more  like  one 
of  those  dried  human  heads  with  which  the 
Dyaks  of  Borneo  deck  their  lodges.  The  skull 
forms  a  solid  nucleus;  but  innumerable  feath- 
ers, leaves,  strings,  beads,  and  loose  appen- 
dices of  every  description  float  and  dangle 
from  it,  and,  save  that  they  terminate  in  it,  seem 
to  have  nothing  to  do  with  one  another.  Even 

so  my  experiences  and  yours  float  and  dangle, 

46 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

terminating,  it  is  true,  in  a  nucleus  of  common 
perception,  but  for  the  most  part  out  of  sight 
and  irrelevant  and  unimaginable  to  one  an- 
other. This  imperfect  intimacy,  this  bare  re- 
lation of  withness  between  some  parts  of  the 
sum  total  of  experience  and  other  parts,  is  the 
fact  that  ordinary  empiricism  over-emphasizes 
against  rationalism,  the  latter  always  tending 
to  ignore  it  unduly.  Radical  empiricism,  on 
the  contrary,  is  fair  to  both  the  unity  and  the 
disconnection.  It  finds  no  reason  for  treating 
either  as  illusory.  It  allots  to  each  its  definite 
sphere  of  description,  and  agrees  that  there 
appear  to  be  actual  forces  at  work  which  tend, 
as  time  goes  on,  to  make  the  unity  greater. 

The  conjunctive  relation  that  has  given 
most  trouble  to  philosophy  is  the  co-conscious 
transition,  so  to  call  it,  by  which  one  experience 
passes  into  another  when  both  belong  to  the 
same  self.  About  the  facts  there  is  no  ques- 
tion. My  experiences  and  your  experiences  are 
'with'  each  other  in  various  external  ways,  but 
mine  pass  into  mine,  and  yours  pass  into  yours 
in  a  way  in  which  yours  and  mine  never  pass 

47 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

into  one  another.  Within  each  of  our  personal 
histories,  subject,  object,  interest  and  purpose 
are  continuous  or  may  be  continuous.1  Personal 
histories  are  processes  of  change  in  time,  and 
the  change  itself  is  one  of  the  things  immediately 
experienced.  'Change'  in  this  case  means  con- 
tinuous as  opposed  to  discontinuous  transi- 
tion. But  continuous  transition  is  one  sort  of  a 
conjunctive  relation;  and  to  be  a  radical  em- 
piricist means  to  hold  fast  to  this  conjunctive 
relation  of  all  others,  for  this  is  the  strategic 
point,  the  position  through  which,  if  a  hole  be 
made,  all  the  corruptions  of  dialectics  and  all 
the  metaphysical  fictions  pour  into  our  philo- 
sophy. The  holding  fast  to  this  relation  means 
taking  it  at  its  face  value,  neither  less  nor  more ; 
and  to  take  it  at  its  face  value  means  first  of 
all  to  take  it  just  as  we  feel  it,  and  not  to  con- 
fuse ourselves  with  abstract  talk  about  it,  in- 
volving words  that  drive  us  to  invent  second- 
ary conceptions  in  order  to  neutralize  their 

1  The  psychology  books  have  of  late  described  the  facts  here  with 
approximate  adequacy.  I  may  refer  to  the  chapters  on '  The  Stream  of 
Thought'  and  on  the  Self  in  my  own  Principles  of  Psychology,  as  well 
as  to  S.  H.  Hodgson's  Mctaphysic  of  Experience,  vol.  i,  ch.  vn  and  vm. 

48 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

suggestions  and  to  make  our  actual  experience 
again  seem  rationally  possible. 

What  I  do  feel  simply  when  a  later  moment 
of  my  experience  succeeds  an  earlier  one  is  that 
though  they  are  two  moments,  the  transition 
from  the  one  to  the  other  is  continuous.  Con- 
tinuity here  is  a  definite  sort  of  experience;  just 
as  definite  as  is  the  discontinuity -experience 
which  I  find  it  impossible  to  avoid  when  I  seek 
to  make  the  transition  from  an  experience  of 
my  own  to  one  of  yours.  In  this  latter  case  I 
have  to  get  on  and  off  again,  to  pass  from  a 
thing  lived  to  another  thing  only  conceived, 
and  the  break  is  positively  experienced  and 
noted.  Though  the  functions  exerted  by  my 
experience  and  by  yours  may  be  the  same  (e.  g., 
the  same  objects  known  and  the  same  purposes 
followed),  yet  the  sameness  has  in  this  case  to 
be  ascertained  expressly  (and  often  with  diffi- 
culty and  uncertainty)  after  the  break  has  been 
felt;  whereas  in  passing  from  one  of  my  own 
moments  to  another  the  sameness  of  object  and 
interest  is  unbroken,  and  both  the  earlier  and 
the  later  experience  are  of  things  directly  lived. 

49 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

There  is  no  other  nature,  no  other  whatness 
than  this  absence  of  break  and  this  sense  of 
continuity  in  that  most  intimate  of  all  conjunc- 
tive relations,  the  passing  of  one  experience 
into  another  when  they  belong  to  the  same  self. 
And  this  whatness  is  real  empirical  *  content/ 
just  as  the  whatness  of  separation  and  discon- 
tinuity is  real  content  in  the  contrasted  case. 
Practically  to  experience  one's  personal  contin- 
uum in  this  living  way  is  to  know  the  originals 
of  the  ideas  of  continuity  and  of  sameness,  to 
know  what  the  words  stand  for  concretely,  to 
own  all  that  they  can  ever  mean.  But  all  expe- 
riences have  their  conditions;  and  over-subtle 
intellects,  thinking  about  the  facts  here,  and 
asking  how  they  are  possible,  have  ended  by 
substituting  a  lot  of  static  objects  of  con- 
ception for  the  direct  perceptual  experiences. 
"Sameness,"  they  have  said,  "must  be  a  stark 
numerical  identity;  it  can't  run  on  from  next  to 
next.  Continuity  can't  mean  mere  absence  of 
gap;  for  if  you  say  two  things  are  in  immediate 
contact,  at  the  contact  how  can  they  be  two? 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  put  a  relation  of 

50 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

transition  between  them,  that  itself  is  a  third 
thing,  and  needs  to  be  related  or  hitched  to  its 
terms.  An  infinite  series  is  involved,"  and  so 
on.  The  result  is  that  from  difficulty  to  diffi- 
culty, the  plain  conjunctive  experience  has 
been  discredited  by  both  schools,  the  empiri- 
cists leaving  things  permanently  disjoined,  and 
the  rationalist  remedying  the  looseness  by  their 
Absolutes  or  Substances,  or  whatever  other  fic- 
titious agencies  of  union  they  may  have  em- 
ployed.1 From  all  which  artificiality  we  can 
be  saved  by  a  couple  of  simple  reflections :  first, 
that  conjunctions  and  separations  are,  at  all 
events,  co-ordinate  phenomena  which,  if  we 
take  experiences  at  their  face  value,  must  be 
accounted  equally  real;  and  second,  that  if  we 
insist  on  treating  things  as  really  separate 
when  they  are  given  as  continuously  joined, 
invoking,  when  union  is  required,  transcen- 
dental principles  to  overcome  the  separateness 
we  have  assumed,  then  we  ought  to  stand 
ready  to  perform  the  converse  act.  We  ought 
to  invoke  higher  principles  of  disunion,  also,  to 

1  [See  "The  Thing  and  its  Relations,"  below,  pp.  92-122.] 
51 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

make  our  merely  experienced  disjunctions  more 
truly  real.  Failing  thus,  we  ought  to  let  the 
originally  given  continuities  stand  on  their  own 
bottom.  We  have  no  right  to  be  lopsided  or  to 
blow  capriciously  hot  and  cold. 

III.   The  Cognitive  Relation 

The  first  great  pitfall  from  which  such  a  radi- 
cal standing  by  experience  will  save  us  is  an 
artificial  conception  of  the  relations  between 
knower  and  known.  Throughout  the  history  of 
philosophy  the  subject  and  its  object  have  been 
treated  as  absolutely  discontinuous  entities; 
and  thereupon  the  presence  of  the  latter  to  the 
former,  or  the  '  apprehension '  by  the  former  of 
the  latter,  has  assumed  a  paradoxical  charac- 
ter which  all  sorts  of  theories  had  to  be  in- 
vented to  overcome.  Representative  theories 
put  a  mental  'representation,'  'image,'  or 
'  content '  into  the  gap,  as  a  sort  of  inter- 
mediary. Common-sense  theories  left  the  gap 
untouched,  declaring  our  mind  able  to  clear 
it  by  a  self-transcending  leap.  Transcenden- 
talist  theories  left  it  impossible  to  traverse  by 

52 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

finite  knowers,  and  brought  an  Absolute  in  to 
perform  the  saltatory  act.  All  the  while,  in 
the  very  bosom  of  the  finite  experience,  every 
conjunction  required  to  make  the  relation  in- 
telligible is  given  in  full.  Either  the  knower 
and  the  known  are: 

(1)  the  self-same  piece  of  experience  taken 
twice  over  in  different  contexts;  or  they  are 

(2)  two  pieces  of  actual  experience  belong- 
ing to  the  same  subject,  with  definite  tracts  of 
conjunctive  transitional  experience  between 
them;  or 

(3)  the  known  is  a  possible  experience  either 
of  that  subject  or  another,  to  which  the  said 
conjunctive  transitions  would  lead,  if  suffi- 
ciently prolonged. 

To  discuss  all  the  ways  in  which  one  ex- 
perience may  function  as  the  knower  of  an- 
other, would  be  incompatible  with  the  limits 
of  this  essay.1  I  have  just  treated  of  type  1,  the 

1  For  brevity's  sake  I  altogether  omit  mention  of  the  type  con- 
stituted by  knowledge  of  the  truth  of  general  propositions.  This  type 
has  been  thoroughly  and,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  satisfactorily,  elucidated 
in  Dewey's  Studies  in  Logical  Theory.  Such  propositions  are  reducible 
to  the  S-is-P  form;  and  the  'terminus'  that  verifies  and  fulfils  is  the 
SP  in  combination.  Of  course  percepts  may  be  involved  in  the  medi- 

53 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

kind  of  knowledge  called  perception.1  This  is 
the  type  of  case  in  which  the  mind  enjoys  di- 
rect 'acquaintance'  with  a  present  object.  In 
the  other  types  the  mind  has  'knowledge- 
about'  an  object  not  immediately  there.  Of 
type  2,  the  simplest  sort  of  conceptual  know- 
ledge, I  have  given  some  account  in  two 
[earlier]  articles.2  Type  3  can  always  formally 
and  hypothetically  be  reduced  to  type  2,  so 
that  a  brief  description  of  that  type  will  put 
the  present  reader  sufficiently  at  my  point 
of  view,  and  make  him  see  what  the  actual 
meanings  of  the  mysterious  cognitive  relation 
may  be. 

Suppose  me  to  be  sitting  here  in  my  library 

ating  experiences,  or  in  the  'satisfactoriness'  of  the  P  in  its  new 
position. 

1  [See  above,  pp.  9-15.] 

2  ["On  the  Function  of  Cognition,"  Mind,  vol.  x,  1885,  and  "The 
Knowing  of  Things  Together,"  Psychological  Review,  vol.  II,  1895. 
These  articles  are  reprinted,  the  former  in  full,  the  latter  in  part,  in  The 
Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  1-50.  Ed.]  These  articles  and  their  doctrine, 
unnoticed  apparently  by  any  one  else,  have  lately  gained  favorable  com- 
ment from  Professor  Strong.  ["  A  Naturalistic  Theory  of  the  Refer- 
ence of  Thought  to  Reality,"  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  i,  1904.]  Dr.  Dickinson  S.  Miller  has  independ- 
ently thought  out  the  same  results  ["The  Meaning  of  Truth  and  Error," 
Philosophical  Review,  vol.  n,  1893;  "The  Confusion  of  Function  and 
Content  in  Mental  Analysis,"  Psychological  Review,  vol.  u,  1895], 
which  Strong  accordingly  dubs  the  James-Miller  theory  of  cognition. 

54 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

at  Cambridge,  at  ten  minutes'  walk  from 
*  Memorial  Hall,'  and  to  be  thinking  truly  of 
the  latter  object.  My  mind  may  have  before 
it  only  the  name,  or  it  may  have  a  clear  image, 
or  it  may  have  a  very  dim  image  of  the  hall,  but 
such  intrinsic  differences  in  the  image  make  no 
difference  in  its  cognitive  function.  Certain 
extrinsic  phenomena,  special  experiences  of 
conjunction,  are  what  impart  to  the  image,  be 
it  what  it  may,  its  knowing  office. 

For  instance,  if  you  ask  me  what  hall  I  mean 
by  my  image,  and  I  can  tell  you  nothing;  or  if  I 
fail  to  point  or  lead  you  towards  the  Harvard 
Delta;  or  if,  being  led  by  you,  I  am  uncertain 
whether  the  Hall  I  see  be  what  I  had  in  mind 
or  not;  you  would  rightly  deny  that  I  had 
'meant'  that  particular  hall  at  all,  even  though 
my  mental  image  might  to  some  degree  have 
resembled  it.  The  resemblance  would  count  in 
that  case  as  coincidental  merely,  for  all  sorts 
of  things  of  a  kind  resemble  one  another  in  this 
world  without  being  held  for  that  reason  to 
take  cognizance  of  one  another. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  I  can  lead  you  to  the 
55 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

hall,  and  tell  you  of  its  history  and  present 
uses;  if  in  its  presence  I  feel  my  idea,  however 
imperfect  it  may  have  been,  to  have  led  hither 
and  to  be  now  terminated;  if  the  associates  of 
the  image  and  of  the  felt  hall  run  parallel,  so 
that  each  term  of  the  one  context  corresponds 
serially,  as  I  walk,  with  an  answering  term  of 
the  others;  why  then  my  soul  was  prophetic, 
and  my  idea  must  be,  and  by  common  consent 
would  be,  called  cognizant  of  reality.  That  per- 
cept was  what  I  meant,  for  into  it  my  idea  has 
passed  by  conjunctive  experiences  of  sameness 
and  fulfilled  intention.  Nowhere  is  there  jar, 
but  every  later  moment  continues  and  corrobo- 
rates an  earlier  one. 

In  this  continuing  and  corroborating,  taken 
in  no  transcendental  sense,  but  denoting  de- 
finitely felt  transitions,  lies  all  that  the  knowing 
of  a  percept  by  an  idea  can  possibly  contain  or 
signify.  Wherever  such  transitions  are  felt,  the 
first  experience  knows  the  last  one.  Where  they 
do  not,  or  where  even  as  possibles  they  can  not, 
intervene,  there  can  be  no  pretence  of  knowing. 
In  this  latter  case  the  extremes  will  be  con- 

56 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

nected,  if  connected  at  all,  by  inferior  relations 
—  bare  likeness  or  succession,  or  by  '  withness ' 
alone.  Knowledge  of  sensible  realities  thus 
comes  to  life  inside  the  tissue  of  experience.  It 
is  made ;  and  made  by  relations  that  unroll 
themselves  in  time.  Whenever  certain  inter- 
mediaries are  given,  such  that,  as  they  develop 
towards  their  terminus,  there  is  experience 
from  point  to  point  of  one  direction  followed, 
and  finally  of  one  process  fulfilled,  the  result 
is  that  their  starting-point  thereby  becomes  a 
knower  and  their  terminus  an  object  meant  or 
known.  That  is  all  that  knowing  (in  the  sim- 
ple case  considered)  can  be  known-as,  that  is 
the  whole  of  its  nature,  put  into  experiential 
terms.  Whenever  such  is  the  sequence  of  our 
experiences  we  may  freely  say  that  we  had  the 
terminal  object  'in  mind'  from  the  outset,  even 
although  at  the  outset  nothing  was  there  in  us 
but  a  flat  piece  of  substantive  experience  like 
any  other,  with  no  self -transcendency  about  it, 
and  no  mystery  save  the  mystery  of  coming 
into  existence  and  of  being  gradually  followed 
by  other  pieces  of  substantive  experience,  with 

57 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

conjunctively  transitional  experiences  between. 
That  is  what  we  mean  here  by  the  object's 
being  'in  mind.'  Of  any  deeper  more  real  way 
of  being  in  mind  we  have  no  positive  concep- 
tion, and  we  have  no  right  to  discredit  our 
actual  experience  by  talking  of  such  a  way 
at  all. 

I  know  that  many  a  reader  will  rebel  at  this. 
"Mere  intermediaries,"  he  will  say,  "even 
though  they  be  feelings  of  continuously  grow- 
ing fulfilment,  only  separate  the  knower  from 
the  known,  whereas  what  we  have  in  knowledge 
is  a  kind  of  immediate  touch  of  the  one  by  the 
other,  an  'apprehension'  in  the  etymological 
sense  of  the  word,  a  leaping  of  the  chasm  as  by 
lightning,  an  act  by  which  two  terms  are  smit- 
ten into  one,  over  the  head  of  their  distinct- 
ness. All  these  dead  intermediaries  of  yours 
are  out  of  each  other,  and  outside  of  their 
termini  still." 

But  do  not  such  dialectic  difficulties  remind 
us  of  the  dog  dropping  his  bone  and  snapping 
at  its  image  in  the  water?  If  we  knew  any  more 
real  kind  of  union  aliunde,  we  might  be  entitled 

58 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

to  brand  all  our  empirical  unions  as  a  sham. 
But  unions  by  continuous  transition  are  the 
only  ones  we  know  of,  whether  in  this  matter 
of  a  knowledge-about  that  terminates  in  an 
acquaintance,  whether  in  personal  identity,  in 
logical  predication  through  the  copula  'is,'  or 
elsewhere.  If  anywhere  there  were  more  ab- 
solute unions  realized,  they  could  only  reveal 
themselves  to  us  by  just  such  conjunctive 
results.  These  are  what  the  unions  are  worthy 
these  are  all  that  we  can  ever  practically  mean 
by  union,  by  continuity.  Is  it  not  time  to 
repeat  what  Lotze  said  of  substances,  that  to 
act  like  one  is  to  be  one  ?  l  Should  we  not  say 
here  that  to  be  experienced  as  continuous  is  to 
be  really  continuous,  in  a  world  where  experi- 
ence and  reality  come  to  the  same  thing  ?  In 
a  picture  gallery  a  painted  hook  will  serve  to 
hang  a  painted  chain  by,  a  painted  cable  will 
hold  a  painted  ship.  In  a  world  where  both  the 
terms  and  their  distinctions  are  affairs  of  ex- 
perience, conjunctions  that  are  experienced 
must  be  at  least  as  real  as  anything  else.  They 

1  [Cf.  H.  Lotze:  Metaphysik,  §§  37-39, 97, 98, 243.] 

59 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

will  be  *  absolutely '  real  conjunctions,  if  we  have 
no  transphenomenal  Absolute  ready,  to  dereal- 
ize  the  whole  experienced  world  by,  at  a  stroke. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  had  such  an  Absolute, 
not  one  of  our  opponents'  theories  of  knowl- 
edge could  remain  standing  any  better  than 
ours  could;  for  the  distinctions  as  well  as  the 
conjunctions  of  experience  would  impartially 
fall  its  prey.  The  whole  question  of  how  *  one ' 
thing  can  know  'another'  would  cease  to  be  a 
real  one  at  all  in  a  world  where  otherness  itself 
was  an  illusion.1 

So  much  for  the  essentials  of  the  cognitive 
relation,  where  the  knowledge  is  conceptual  in 
type,  or  forms  knowledge  *  about '  an  object.  It 
consists  in  intermediary  experiences  (possible, 
if  not  actual)  of  continuously  developing  pro- 
gress, and,  finally,  of  fulfilment,  when  the  sen- 
sible percept,  which  is  the  object,  is  reached. 
The  percept  here  not  only  verifies  the  concept, 
proves  its  function  of  knowing  that  percept  to 

1  Mr.  Bradley,  not  professing  to  know  his  absolute  aliunde,  never- 
theless derealizes  Experience  by  alleging  it  to  be  everywhere  infected 
with  self-contradiction.  His  arguments  seem  almost  purely  verbal, 
but  this  is  no  place  for  arguing  that  point  out.  [Cf.  F.  H.  Bradley; 
Appearance  and  Reality,  passim;  and  below,  pp.  106-122.] 

60 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

be  true,  but  the  percept's  existence  as  the 
terminus  of  the  chain  of  intermediaries  creates 
the  function.  Whatever  terminates  that  chain 
was,  because  it  now  proves  itself  to  be,  what 
the  concept  'had  in  mind/ 

The  towering  importance  for  human  life  of 
this  kind  of  knowing  lies  in  the  fact  that  an 
experience  that  knows  another  can  figure  as 
its  representative,  not  in  any  quasi-miraculous 
'epistemological'  sense,  but  in  the  definite 
practical  sense  of  being  its  substitute  in  various 
operations,  sometimes  physical  and  sometimes 
mental,  which  lead  us  to  its  associates  and  re- 
sults. By  experimenting  on  our  ideas  of  reality, 
we  may  save  ourselves  the  trouble  of  experi- 
menting on  the  real  experiences  which  they 
severally  mean.  The  ideas  form  related  sys- 
tems, corresponding  point  for  point  to  the  sys- 
tems which  the  realities  form;  and  by  letting  an 
ideal  term  call  up  its  associates  systematically, 
we  may  be  led  to  a  terminus  which  the  corre- 
sponding real  term  would  have  led  to  in  case 
we  had  operated  on  the  real  world.  And  this 
brings  us  to  the  general  question  of  substitution. 

61 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

IV.  Substitution 

In  Taine's  brilliant  book  on  'Intelligence,' 
substitution  was  for  the  first  time  named  as 
a  cardinal  logical  function,  though  of  course 
the  facts  had  always  been  familiar  enough. 
What,  exactly,  in  a  system  of  experiences,  does 
the  '  substitution '  of  one  of  them  for  another 
mean  ? 

According  to  my  view,  experience  as  a  whole 
is  a  process  in  time,  whereby  innumerable 
particular  terms  lapse  and  are  superseded  by 
others  that  follow  upon  them  by  transitions 
which,  whether  disjunctive  or  conjunctive  in 
content,  are  themselves  experiences,  and  must 
in  general  be  accounted  at  least  as  real  as 
the  terms  which  they  relate.  What  the  nature 
of  the  event  called  'superseding'  signifies,  de- 
pends altogether  on  the  kind  of  transition 
that  obtains.  Some  experiences  simply  abolish 
their  predecessors  without  continuing  them 
in  any  way.  Others  are  felt  to  increase  or  to 
enlarge  their  meaning,  to  carry  out  their  pur- 
pose, or  to  bring  us  nearer  to  their  goal.  They 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

*  represent'  them,  and  may  fulfil  their  function 
better  than  they  fulfilled  it  themselves.  But  to 

*  fulfil  a  function'  in  a  world  of  pure  experience 
can  be  conceived  and  defined  in  only  one  pos- 
sible way.  In  such  a  world  transitions  and 
arrivals  (or  terminations)  are  the  only  events 
that  happen,  though  they  happen  by  so  many 
sorts  of  path.  The  only  function  that  one  ex- 
perience can  perform  is  to  lead  into  another 
experience;  and  the  only  fulfilment  we  can 
speak  of  is  the  reaching  of  a  certain  experi- 
enced end.  When  one  experience  leads  to  (or 
can  lead  to)  the  same  end  as  another,  they 
agree  in  function.  But  the  whole  system  of 
experiences  as  they  are  immediately  given 
presents  itself  as  a  quasi-chaos  through  which 
one  can  pass  out  of  an  initial  term  in  many 
directions  and  yet  end  in  the  same  terminus, 
moving  from  next  to  next  by  a  great  many 
possible  paths. 

Either  one  of  these  paths  might  be  a  func- 
tional substitute  for  another,  and  to  follow  one 
rather  than  another  might  on  occasion  be 
an  advantageous  thing  to  do.  As  a  matter  of 

63 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

fact,  and  in  a  general  way,  the  paths  that 
run  through  conceptual  experiences,  that  is, 
through  '  thoughts '  or  '  ideas '  that '  know '  the 
things  in  which  they  terminate,  are  highly  ad- 
vantageous paths  to  follow.  Not  only  do  they 
yield  inconceivably  rapid  transitions;  but,  ow- 
ing to  the  '  universal '  character  x  which  they 
frequently  possess,  and  to  their  capacity  for 
association  with  one  another  in  great  systems, 
they  outstrip  the  tardy  consecutions  of  the 
things  themselves,  and  sweep  us  on  towards 
our  ultimate  termini  in  a  far  more  labor-saving 
way  than  the  following  of  trains  of  sensible 
perception  ever  could.  Wonderful  are  the  new 
cuts  and  the  short-circuits  which  the  thought- 
paths  make.  Most  thought-paths,  it  is  true, 
are  substitutes  for  nothing  actual;  they  end 
outside  the  real  world  altogether,  in  way- 
ward fancies,  Utopias,  fictions  or  mistakes.  But 
where  they  do  re-enter  reality  and  terminate 
therein,  we  substitute  them  always;  and  with 

1  Of  which  all  that  need  be  said  in  this  essay  is  that  it  also  can  be 
conceived  as  functional,  and  defined  in  terms  of  transitions,  or  of  the 
possibliity  of  such.  [Cf.  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i,  pp.  473-480, 
vol.  ii,  pp.  337-340;  Pragmatism,  p.  265;  Some  Problems  of  Philoso- 
phy, pp.  63-74;  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  246-247,  etc.  Ed.] 

64 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

these  substitutes  we  pass  the  greater  number 
of  our  hours. 

This  is  why  I  called  our  experiences,  taken 
all  together,  a  quasi-chaos.  There  is  vastly 
more  discontinuity  in  the  sum  total  of  experi- 
ences than  we  commonly  suppose.  The  objec- 
tive nucleus  of  every  man's  experience,  his  own 
body,  is,  it  is  true,  a  continuous  percept;  and 
equally  continuous  as  a  percept  (though  we 
may  be  inattentive  to  it)  is  the  material  en- 
vironment of  that  body,  changing  by  gradual 
transition  when  the  body  moves.  But  the 
distant  parts  of  the  physical  world  are  at  all 
times  absent  from  us,  and  form  conceptual 
objects  merely,  into  the  perceptual  reality  of 
which  our  life  inserts  itself  at  points  discrete 
and  relatively  rare.  Round  their  several  ob- 
jective nuclei,  partly  shared  and  common  and 
partly  discrete,  of  the  real  physical  world,  in- 
numerable thinkers,  pursuing  their  several  lines 
of  physically  true  cogitation,  trace  paths  that 
intersect  one  another  only  at  discontinuous 
perceptual  points,  and  the  rest  of  the  time  are 

quite  incongruent;  and  around  all  the  nuclei 

65 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

of  shared  *  reality,'  as  around  the  Dyak's  head 
of  my  late  metaphor,  floats  the  vast  cloud  of 
experiences  that  are  wholly  subjective,  that 
are  non-substitutional,  that  find  not  even  an 
eventual  ending  for  themselves  in  the  per- 
ceptual world  —  the  mere  day-dreams  and 
joys  and  sufferings  and  wishes  of  the  individ- 
ual minds.  These  exist  with  one  another,  in- 
deed, and  with  the  objective  nuclei,  but  out 
of  them  it  is  probable  that  to  all  eternity  no 
interrelated  system  of  any  kind  will  ever  be 
made. 

This  notion  of  the  purely  substitutional  or 
conceptual  physical  world  brings  us  to  the  most 
critical  of  all  the  steps  in  the  development  of 
a  philosophy  of  pure  experience.  The  paradox 
of  self -transcendency  in  knowledge  comes  back 
upon  us  here,  but  I  think  that  our  notions  of 
pure  experience  and  of  substitution,  and  our 
radically  empirical  view  of  conjunctive  transi- 
tions, are  Denkmittel  that  will  carry  us  safely 
through  the  pass. 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

V.    What  Objective  Reference  Is. 

Whosoever  feels  his  experience  to  be  some- 
thing substitutional  even  while  he  has  it,  may 
be  said  to  have  an  experience  that  reaches 
beyond  itself.  From  inside  of  its  own  entity  it 
says  'more/ and  postulates  reality  existing  else- 
where. For  the  transcendentalist,  who  holds 
knowing  to  consist  in  a  salto  mortale  across  an 
*  epistemological  chasm,'  such  an  idea  presents 
no  difficulty;  but  it  seems  at  first  sight  as  if  it 
might  be  inconsistent  with  an  empiricism  like 
our  own.  Have  we  not  explained  that  con- 
ceptual knowledge  is  made  such  wholly  by  the 
existence  of  things  that  fall  outside  of  the 
knowing  experience  itself  —  by  intermediary 
experiences  and  by  a  terminus  that  fulfils? 
Can  the  knowledge  be  there  before  these  ele- 
ments that  constitute  its  being  have  come? 
And,  if  knowledge  be  not  there,  how  can  ob- 
jective reference  occur  ? 

The  key  to  this  difficulty  lies  in  the  distinc- 
tion between  knowing  as  verified  and  com- 
pleted, and  the  same  knowing  as  in  transit 

67 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

and  on  its  way.  To  recur  to  the  Memorial 
Hall  example  lately  used,  it  is  only  when  our 
idea  of  the  Hall  has  actually  terminated  in  the 
percept  that  we  know  'for  certain'  that  from 
the  beginning  it  was  truly  cognitive  of  that. 
Until  established  by  the  end  of  the  process,  its 
quality  of  knowing  that,  or  indeed  of  knowing 
anything,  could  still  be  doubted;  and  yet  the 
knowing  really  was  there,  as  the  result  now 
shows.  We  were  virtual  knowers  of  the  Hall 
long  before  we  were  certified  to  have  been  its 
actual  knowers,  by  the  percept's  retroactive 
validating  power.  Just  so  we  are  *  mortal'  all 
the  time,  by  reason  of  the  virtuality  of  the 
inevitable  event  which  will  make  us  so  when 
it  shall  have  come. 

Now  the  immensely  greater  part  of  all  our 
knowing  never  gets  beyond  this  virtual  stage. 
It  never  is  completed  or  nailed  down.  I  speak 
not  merely  of  our  ideas  of  imperceptibles  like 
ether-waves  or  dissociated  'ions,'  or  of  'ejects' 
like  the  contents  of  our  neighbors'  minds;  I 
speak  also  of  ideas  which  we  might  verify  if  we 
would  take  the  trouble,  but  which  we  hold  for 

68 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

true  although  unterminated  perceptually,  be- 
cause nothing  says  'no' to  us,  and  there  is  no 
contradicting  truth  in  sight.  To  continue  think- 
ing unchallenged  is,  ninety-nine  times  out  of  a 
hundred,  our  practical  substitute  for  knowing  in 
the  completed  sense.  As  each  experience  runs  by 
cognitive  transition  into  the  next  one,  and  we 
nowhere  feel  a  collision  with  what  we  elsewhere 
count  as  truth  or  fact,  we  commit  ourselves  to 
the  current  as  if  the  port  were  sure.  We  live, 
as  it  were,  upon  the  front  edge  of  an  advanc- 
ing wave-crest,  and  our  sense  of  a  determinate 
direction  in  falling  forward  is  all  we  cover  of 
the  future  of  our  path.  It  is  as  if  a  differential 
quotient  should  be  conscious  and  treat  itself  as 
an  adequate  substitute  for  a  traced-out  curve. 
Our  experience,  inter  alia,  is  of  variations  of 
rate  and  of  direction,  and  lives  in  these  transi- 
tions more  than  in  the  journey's  end.  The  ex- 
periences of  tendency  are  sufficient  to  act  upon 
—  what  more  could  we  have  done  at  those 
moments  even  if  the  later  verification  comes 
complete  ? 

This  is  what,  as  a  radical  empiricist,  I  say  to 
69 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

the  charge  that  the  objective  reference  which 
is  so  flagrant  a  character  of  our  experiences  in- 
volves a  chasm  and  a  mortal  leap.  A  positively 
conjunctive  transition  involves  neither  chasm 
nor  leap.  Being  the  very  original  of  what  we 
mean  by  continuity,  it  makes  a  continuum 
wherever  it  appears.  I  know  full  well  that  such 
brief  words  as  these  will  leave  the  hardened 
transcendentalist  unshaken.  Conjunctive  expe- 
riences separate  their  terms,  he  will  still  say :  they 
are  third  things  interposed,  that  have  them- 
selves to  be  conjoined  by  new  links,  and  to  in- 
voke them  makes  our  trouble  infinitely  worse. 
To  'feel'  our  motion  forward  is  impossible. 
Motion  implies  terminus;  and  how  can  termi- 
nus be  felt  before  we  have  arrived?  The  barest 
start  and  sally  forwards,  the  barest  tendency 
to  leave  the  instant,  involves  the  chasm  and 
the  leap.  Conjunctive  transitions  are  the  most 
superficial  of  appearances,  illusions  of  our  sensi- 
bility which  philosophical  reflection  pulverizes 
at  a  touch.  Conception  is  our  only  trust- 
worthy instrument,  conception  and  the  Abso- 
lute working  hand  in  hand.    Conception  dis- 

70 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

integrates  experience  utterly,  but  its  disjunc- 
tions are  easily  overcome  again  when  the  Abso- 
lute takes  up  the  task. 

Such  transcendentalists  I  must  leave,  pro- 
visionally at  least,  in  full  possession  of  their 
creed.1  I  have  no  space  for  polemics  in  this 
article,  so  I  shall  simply  formulate  the  empiri- 
cist doctrine  as  my  hypothesis,  leaving  it  to 
work  or  not  work  as  it  may. 

Objective  reference,  I  say  then,  is  an  inci- 
dent of  the  fact  that  so  much  of  our  experi- 
ence comes  as  an  insufficient  and  consists  of 
process  and  transition.  Our  fields  of  experience 
have  no  more  definite  boundaries  than  have 
our  fields  of  view.  Both  are  fringed  forever  by 
a  more  that  continuously  develops,  and  that 
continuously  supersedes  them  as  life  proceeds. 
The  relations,  generally  speaking,  are  as  real 
here  as  the  terms  are,  and  the  only  complaint 
of  the  transcendentalisms  with  which  I  could 
at  all  sympathize  would  be  his  charge  that,  by 
first  making  knowledge  to  consist  in  external 
relations  as  I  have  done,  and  by  then  confess- 

1  [Cf.  below,  pp.  93  ff.] 
71 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ing  that  nine-tenths  of  the  time  these  are 
not  actually  but  only  virtually  there,  I  have 
knocked  the  solid  bottom  out  of  the  whole 
business,  and  palmed  off  a  substitute  of  know- 
ledge for  the  genuine  thing.  Only  the  admis- 
sion, such  a  critic  might  say,  that  our  ideas  are 
self -transcendent  and  'true'  already,  in  ad- 
vance of  the  experiences  that  are  to  terminate 
them,  can  bring  solidity  back  to  knowledge 
in  a  world  like  this,  in  which  transitions  and 
terminations  are  only  by  exception  fulfilled. 

This  seems  to  me  an  excellent  place  for 
applying  the  pragmatic  method.  When  a 
dispute  arises,  that  method  consists  in  augur- 
ing what  practical  consequences  would  be 
different  if  one  side  rather  than  the  other  were 
true.  If  no  difference  can  be  thought  of,  the 
dispute  is  a  quarrel  over  words.  What  then 
would  the  self -transcendency  affirmed  to  exist 
in  advance  of  all  experiential  mediation  or 
termination,  be  known-as?  What  would  it 
practically  result  in  for  us,  were  it  true  ? 

It  could  only  result  in  our  orientation,  in  the 
turning  of  our  expectations  and  practical  ten- 

72 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

dencies  into  the  right  path;  and  the  right  path 
here,  so  long  as  we  and  the  object  are  not  yet 
face  to  face  (or  can  never  get  face  to  face,  as  in 
the  case  of  ejects),  would  be  the  path  that  led 
us  into  the  object's  nearest  neighborhood. 
Where  direct  acquaintance  is  lacking,  'know- 
ledge about*  is  the  next  best  thing,  and  an 
acquaintance  with  what  actually  lies  about  the 
object,  and  is  most  closely  related  to  it,  puts 
such  knowledge  within  our  grasp.  Ether-waves 
and  your  anger,  for  example,  are  things  in 
which  my  thoughts  will  never  perceptually  ter- 
minate, but  my  concepts  of  them  lead  me  to 
their  very  brink,  to  the  chromatic  fringes  and 
to  the  hurtful  words  and  deeds  which  are  their 
really  next  effects. 

Even  if  our  ideas  did  in  themselves  carry  the 
postulated  self-transcendency,  it  would  still 
remain  true  that  their  putting  us  into  pos- 
session of  such  effects  would  be  the  sole  cash- 
value  of  the  self-transcendency  for  us.  And  this 
cash-value,  it  is  needless  to  say,  is  verbatim  et 
literatim  what  our  empiricist  account  pays  in. 
On  pragmatist  principles  therefore,  a  dispute 

73 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

over  self-transcendency  is  a  pure  logomachy. 
Call  our  concepts  of  ejective  things  self- 
transcendent  or  the  reverse,  it  makes  no  dif- 
ference, so  long  as  we  don't  differ  about  the 
nature  of  that  exalted  virtue's  fruits  —  fruits 
for  us,  of  course,  humanistic  fruits.  If  an 
Absolute  were  proved  to  exist  for  other  rea- 
sons, it  might  well  appear  that  his  knowledge  is 
terminated  in  innumerable  cases  where  ours  is 
still  incomplete.  That,  however,  would  be  a 
fact  indifferent  to  our  knowledge.  The  latter 
would  grow  neither  worse  nor  better,  whether 
we  acknowledged  such  an  Absolute  or  left  him 
out. 

So  the  notion  of  a  knowledge  still  in  transitu 
and  on  its  way  joins  hands  here  with  that 
notion  of  a  'pure  experience'  which  I  tried  to 
explain  in  my  [essay]  entitled  'Does  Con- 
sciousness Exist?'  The  instant  field  of  the 
present  is  always  experience  in  its  'pure'  state, 
plain  unqualified  actuality,  a  simple  that,  as  yet 
undifferentiated  into  thing  and  thought,  and 
only  virtually  classifiable  as  objective  fact  or  as 
some  one's  opinion  about  fact.  This  is  as  true 

74 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

when  the  field  is  conceptual  as  when  it  is  per- 
ceptual. '  Memorial  Hall '  is  *  there '  in  my  idea 
as  much  as  when  I  stand  before  it.  I  proceed  to 
act  on  its  account  in  either  case.  Only  in  the 
later  experience  that  supersedes  the  present 
one  is  this  naif  immediacy  retrospectively  split 
into  two  parts,  a  '  consciousness'  and  its  *  con- 
tent/ and  the  content  corrected  or  confirmed. 
While  still  pure,  or  present,  any  experience  — 
mine,  for  example,  of  what  I  write  about  in 
these  very  lines  —  passes  for  'truth.'  The 
morrow  may  reduce  it  to  'opinion.'  The  trans- 
cendentalist  in  all  his  particular  knowledges  is 
as  liable  to  this  reduction  as  I  am :  his  Absolute 
does  not  save  him.  Why,  then,  need  he  quarrel 
with  an  account  of  knowing  that  merely  leaves 
it  liable  to  this  inevitable  condition?  Why  in- 
sist that  knowing  is  a  static  relation  out  of 
time  when  it  practically  seems  so  much  a  func- 
tion of  our  active  life?  For  a  thing  to  be  valid, 
says  Lotze,  is  the  same  as  to  make  itself 
valid.  When  the  whole  universe  seems  only 
to  be  making  itself  valid  and  to  be  still  incom- 
plete (else  why  its  ceaseless  changing?)  why,  of 

75 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

all  things,  should  knowing  be  exempt?  Why- 
should  it  not  be  making  itself  valid  like  every- 
thing else?  That  some  parts  of  it  may  be  al- 
ready valid  or  verified  beyond  dispute,  the 
empirical  philosopher,  of  course,  like  any  one 
else,  may  always  hope. 

VI.  The  Conterminousness  of  Different  Minds  1 

With  transition  and  prospect  thus  enthroned 
in  pure  experience,  it  is  impossible  to  sub- 
scribe to  the  idealism  of  the  English  school. 
Radical  empiricism  has,  in  fact,  more  affini- 
ties with  natural  realism  than  with  the  views 
of  Berkeley  or  of  Mill,  and  this  can  be  easily 
shown. 

For  the  Berkeleyan  school,  ideas  (the  verbal 
equivalent  of  what  I  term  experiences)  are  dis- 
continuous. The  content  of  each  is  wholly  im- 
manent, and  there  are  no  transitions  with 
which  they  are  consubstantial  and  through 
which  their  beings  may  unite.  Your  Memorial 
Hall  and  mine,  even  when  both  are  percepts, 
are  wholly  out  of  connection  with  each  other. 

1  [Cf. "  How  Two  Minds  CanKnowOne  Thing,"  below,  pp.  123-136.] 

76 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

Our  lives  are  a  congeries  of  solipsisms,  out  of 
which  in  strict  logic  only  a  God  could  compose 
a  universe  even  of  discourse.  No  dynamic 
currents  run  between  my  objects  and  your 
objects.  Never  can  our  minds  meet  in  the 
same. 

The  incredibility  of  such  a  philosophy  is 
flagrant.  It  is  'cold,  strained,  and  unnatural* 
in  a  supreme  degree;  and  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  even  Berkeley  himself,  who  took  it 
so  religiously,  really  believed,  when  walking 
through  the  streets  of  London,  that  his  spirit 
and  the  spirits  of  his  fellow  wayfarers  had 
absolutely  different  towns  in  view. 

To  me  the  decisive  reason  in  favor  of  our 
minds  meeting  in  some  common  objects  at  least 
is  that,  unless  I  make  that  supposition,  I  have 
no  motive  for  assuming  that  your  mind  exists 
at  all.  Why  do  I  postulate  your  mind  ?  Be- 
cause I  see  your  body  acting  in  a  certain  way. 
Its  gestures,  facial  movements,  words  and  con- 
duct generally,  are  'expressive,'  so  I  deem  it 
actuated  as  my  own  is,  by  an  inner  life  like 
mine.  This  argument  from  analogy  is  my  rea- 

77 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

son,  whether  an  instinctive  belief  runs  before  it 
or  not.  But  what  is  'your  body'  here  but  a 
percept  in  my  field  ?  It  is  only  as  animating 
that  object,  my  object,  that  I  have  any  occasion 
to  think  of  you  at  all.  If  the  body  that  you 
actuate  be  not  the  very  body  that  I  see  there, 
but  some  duplicate  body  of  your  own  with 
which  that  has  nothing  to  do,  we  belong  to 
different  universes,  you  and  I,  and  for  me  to 
speak  of  you  is  folly.  Myriads  of  such  uni- 
verses even  now  may  coexist,  irrelevant  to  one 
another;  my  concern  is  solely  with  the  universe 
with  which  my  own  life  is  connected. 

In  that  perceptual  part  of  my  universe  which 
I  call  your  body,  your  mind  and  my  mind  meet 
and  may  be  called  conterminous.  Your  mind 
actuates  that  body  and  mine  sees  it ;  my 
thoughts  pass  into  it  as  into  their  harmonious 
cognitive  fulfilment;  your  emotions  and  voli- 
tions pass  into  it  as  causes  into  their  effects.  ? 

But  that  percept  hangs  together  with  all  our 
other  physical  percepts.  They  are  of  one  stuff 
with  it;  and  if  it  be  our  common  possession, 

they  must  be  so  likewise.  For  instance,  your 

78 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

hand  lays  hold  of  one  end  of  a  rope  and  my 
hand  lays  hold  of  the  other  end.  We  pull 
against  each  other.  Can  our  two  hands  be 
mutual  objects  in  this  experience,  and  the  rope 
not  be  mutual  also?  What  is  true  of  the  rope  is 
true  of  any  other  percept.  Your  objects  are 
over  and  over  again  the  same  as  mine.  If  I 
ask  you  where  some  object  of  yours  is,  our  old 
Memorial  Hall,  for  example,  you  point  to  my 
Memorial  Hall  with  your  hand  which  I  see.  If 
you  alter  an  object  in  your  world,  put  out  a 
candle,  for  example,  when  I  am  present,  my 
candle  ipso  facto  goes  out.  It  is  only  as  altering 
my  objects  that  I  guess  you  to  exist.  If  your 
objects  do  not  coalesce  with  my  objects,  if  they 
be  not  identically  where  mine  are,  they  must 
be  proved  to  be  positively  somewhere  else. 
But  no  other  location  can  be  assigned  for  them, 
so  their  place  must  be  what  it  seems  to  be,  the 
same.1 

.  Practically,  then,  our  minds  meet  in  a  world 
of  objects  which  they  share  in  common,  which 

1  The  notion  that  our  objects  are  inside  of  our  respective  heads  is 
not  seriously  defensible,  so  I  pass  it  by. 

79 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

would  still  be  there,  if  one  or  several  of  the 
minds  were  destroyed.  I  can  see  no  formal 
objection  to  this  supposition's  being  literally 
true.  On  the  principles  which  I  am  defending, 
a  'mind'  or  *  personal  consciousness'  is  the 
name  for  a  series  of  experiences  run  together  by 
certain  definite  transitions,  and  an  objective 
reality  is  a  series  of  similar  experiences  knit  by 
different  transitions.  If  one  and  the  same  ex- 
perience can  figure  twice,  once  in  a  mental  and 
once  in  a  physical  context  (as  I  have  tried,  in 
my  article  on  '  Consciousness,'  to  show  that  it 
can),  one  does  not  see  why  it  might  not  figure 
thrice,  or  four  times,  or  any  number  of  times, 
by  running  into  as  many  different  mental  con- 
texts, just  as  the  same  point,  lying  at  their 
intersection,  can  be  continued  into  many  dif- 
ferent lines.  Abolishing  any  number  of  con- 
texts would  not  destroy  the  experience  itself 
or  its  other  contexts,  any  more  than  abolish- 
ing some  of  the  point's  linear  continuations 
would  destroy  the  others,  or  destroy  the  point 
itself. 

I  well  know  the  subtle  dialectic  which  insists 
80 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

that  a  term  taken  in  another  relation  must 
needs  be  an  intrinsically  different  term.  The 
crux  is  always  the  old  Greek  one,  that  the  same 
man  can't  be  tall  in  relation  to  one  neighbor, 
and  short  in  relation  to  another,  for  that  would 
make  him  tall  and  short  at  once.  In  this  essay 
I  can  not  stop  to  refute  this  dialectic,  so  I  pass 
on,  leaving  my  flank  for  the  time  exposed.1 
But  if  my  reader  will  only  allow  that  the  same 
'now'  both  ends  his  past  and  begins  his  future; 
or  that,  when  he  buys  an  acre  of  land  from  his 
neighbor,  it  is  the  same  acre  that  successively 
figures  in  the  two  estates;  or  that  when  I  pay 
him  a  dollar,  the  same  dollar  goes  into  his 
pocket  that  came  out  of  mine;  he  will  also  in 
consistency  have  to  allow  that  the  same  object 
may  conceivably  play  a  part  in,  as  being  re- 
lated to  the  rest  of,  any  number  of  otherwise 
entirely  different  minds.  This  is  enough  for 
my  present  point :  the  common-sense  notion  of 
minds  sharing  the  same  object  offers  no  spe- 
cial logical  or  epistemological  difficulties  of  its 
own;  it  stands  or  falls  with  the  general  possibil- 

1  [The  argument  is  resumed  below,  pp.  101  sq.    Ed.] 
81 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ity  of  things  being  in  conjunctive  relation  with 
other  things  at  all. 

In  principle,  then,  let  natural  realism  pass 
for  possible.  Your  mind  and  mine  may  termi- 
nate in  the  same  percept,  not  merely  against  it, 
as  if  it  were  a  third  external  thing,  but  by  in- 
serting themselves  into  it  and  coalescing  with 
it,  for  such  is  the  sort  of  conjunctive  union  that 
appears  to  be  experienced  when  a  perceptual 
terminus  'fulfils.'  Even  so,  two  hawsers  may 
embrace  the  same  pile,  and  yet  neither  one  of 
them  touch  any  other  part  except  that  pile,  of 
what  the  other  hawser  is  attached  to. 

It  is  therefore  not  a  formal  question,  but 
a  question  of  empirical  fact  solely,  whether, 
when  you  and  I  are  said  to  know  the  'same' 
Memorial  Hall,  our  minds  do  terminate  at  or  in 
a  numerically  identical  percept.  Obviously,  as 
a  plain  matter  of  fact,  they  do  not.  Apart  from 
color-blindness  and  such  possibilities,  we  see 
the  Hall  in  different  perspectives.  You  may  be 
on  one  side  of  it  and  I  on  another.  The  percept 
of  each  of  us,  as  he  sees  the  surface  of  the  Hall, 

is  moreover  only  his  provisional  terminus.  The 

82 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

next  thing  beyond  my  percept  is  not  your 
mind,  but  more  percepts  of  my  own  into  which 
my  first  percept  develops,  the  interior  of  the 
Hall,  for  instance,  or  the  inner  structure  of  its 
bricks  and  mortar.  If  our  minds  were  in  a 
literal  sense  conterminous,  neither  could  get 
beyond  the  percept  which  they  had  in  com- 
mon, it  would  be  an  ultimate  barrier  between 
them  —  unless  indeed  they  flowed  over  it  and 
became  *  co-conscious'  over  a  still  larger  part 
of  their  content,  which  (thought-transference 
apart)  is  not  supposed  to  be  the  case.  In  point 
of  fact  the  ultimate  common  barrier  can  always 
be  pushed,  by  both  minds,  farther  than  any 
actual  percept  of  either,  until  at  last  it  resolves 
itself  into  the  mere  notion  of  imperceptibles 
like  atoms  or  ether,  so  that,  where  we  do  ter- 
minate in  percepts,  our  knowledge  is  only  spe- 
ciously completed,  being,  in  theoretic  strict- 
ness, only  a  virtual  knowledge  of  those  remoter 
objects  which  conception  carries  out. 

Is  natural  realism,  permissible  in  logic,  re- 
futed then  by  empirical  fact  ?  Do  our  minds 
have  no  object  in  common  after  all  ? 

83 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

Yes,  they  certainly  have  Space  in  common. 
On  pragmatic  principles  we  are  obliged  to  predi- 
cate sameness  wherever  we  can  predicate  no 
assignable  point  of  difference.  If  two  named 
things  have  every  quality  and  function  indis- 
cernible, and  are  at  the  same  time  in  the  same 
place,  they  must  be  written  down  as  numeri- 
cally one  thing  under  two  different  names.  But 
there  is  no  test  discoverable,  so  far  as  I  know, 
by  which  it  can  be  shown  that  the  place  occu- 
pied by  your  percept  of  Memorial  Hall  differs 
from  the  place  occupied  by  mine.  The  per- 
cepts themselves  may  be  shown  to  differ;  but 
if  each  of  us  be  asked  to  point  out  where  his 
percept  is,  we  point  to  an  identical  spot.  All 
the  relations,  whether  geometrical  or  causal,  of 
the  Hall  originate  or  terminate  in  that  spot 
wherein  our  hands  meet,  and  where  each  of  us 
begins  to  work  if  he  wishes  to  make  the  Hall 
change  before  the  other's  eyes.  Just  so  it  is 
with  our  bodies.  That  body  of  yours  which 
you  actuate  and  feel  from  within  must  be  in 
the  same  spot  as  the  body  of  yours  which  I  see 
or  touch  from  without.  'There'  for  me  means 

84 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

where  I  place  my  finger.  If  you  do  not  feel  my 
finger's  contact  to  be  *  there'  in  my  sense,  when 
I  place  it  on  your  body,  where  then  do  you  feel 
it?  Your  inner  actuations  of  your  body  meet 
my  finger  there:  it  is  there  that  you  resist  its 
push,  or  shrink  back,  or  sweep  the  finger  aside 
with  your  hand.  Whatever  farther  knowledge 
either  of  us  may  acquire  of  the  real  constitu- 
tion of  the  body  which  we  thus  feel,  you  from 
within  and  I  from  without,  it  is  in  that  same 
place  that  the  newly  conceived  or  perceived 
constituents  have  to  be  located,  and  it  is 
through  that  space  that  your  and  my  mental 
intercourse  with  each  other  has  always  to  be 
carried  on,  by  the  mediation  of  impressions 
which  I  convey  thither,  and  of  the  reactions 
thence  which  those  impressions  may  provoke 
from  you. 

In  general  terms,  then,  whatever  differing 
contents  our  minds  may  eventually  fill  a  place 
with,  the  place  itself  is  a  numerically  identical 
content  of  the  two  minds,  a  piece  of  common 
property  in  which,  through  which,  and  over 
which  they  join.   The  receptacle  of  certain  of 

85 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

our  experiences  being  thus  common,  the  ex- 
periences themselves  might  some  day  become 
common  also.  If  that  day  ever  did  come,  our 
thoughts  would  terminate  in  a  complete  empir- 
ical identity,  there  would  be  an  end,  so  far  as 
those  experiences  went,  to  our  discussions  about 
truth.  No  points  of  difference  appearing,  they 
would  have  to  count  as  the  same. 

VII.  Conclusion 

With  this  we  have  the  outlines  of  a  philo- 
sophy of  pure  experience  before  us.  At  the  out- 
set of  my  essay,  I  called  it  a  mosaic  philosophy. 
In  actual  mosaics  the  pieces  are  held  together 
by  their  bedding,  for  which  bedding  the  Sub- 
stances, transcendental  Egos,  or  Absolutes  of 
other  philosophies  may  be  taken  to  stand.  In 
radical  empiricism  there  is  no  bedding;  it  is  as 
if  the  pieces  clung  together  by  their  edges,  the 
transitions  experienced  between  them  forming 
their  cement.  Of  course  such  a  metaphor  is 
misleading,  for  in  actual  experience  the  more 
substantive  and  the  more  transitive  parts  run 
into  each  other  continuously,  there  is  in  general 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

no  separateness  needing  to  be  overcome  by  an 
external  cement;  and  whatever  separateness 
is  actually  experienced  is  not  overcome,  it 
stays  and  counts  as  separateness  to  the  end. 
But  the  metaphor  serves  to  symbolize  the  fact 
that  Experience  itself,  taken  at  large,  can  grow 
by  its  edges.  That  one  moment  of  it  pro- 
liferates into  the  next  by  transitions  which, 
whether  conjunctive  or  disjunctive,  continue 
the  experiential  tissue,  can  not,  I  contend,  be 
denied.  Life  is  in  the  transitions  as  much  as  in 
the  terms  connected;  often,  indeed,  it  seems  to 
be  there  more  emphatically,  as  if  our  spurts 
and  sallies  forward  were  the  real  firing-line  of 
the  battle,  were  like  the  thin  line  of  flame  ad- 
vancing across  the  dry  autumnal  field  which 
the  farmer  proceeds  to  burn.  In  this  line  we 
live  prospectively  as  well  as  retrospectively. 
It  is  'of  the  past,  inasmuch  as  it  comes  ex- 
pressly as  the  past's  continuation;  it  is  'of '  the 
future  in  so  far  as  the  future,  when  it  comes, 
will  have  continued  it. 

These  relations  of  continuous  transition  ex- 
perienced are  what  make  our  experiences  cog- 

87 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

nitive.  In  the  simplest  and  completest  cases 
the  experiences  are  cognitive  of  one  another. 
When  one  of  them  terminates  a  previous  series 
of  them  with  a  sense  of  fulfilment,  it,  we  say, 
is  what  those  other  experiences  '  had  in  view.' 
The  knowledge,  in  such  a  case,  is  verified;  the 
truth  is  *  salted  down.'  Mainly,  however,  we 
live  on  speculative  investments,  or  on  our  pro- 
spects only.  But  living  on  things  in  posse  is 
as  good  as  living  in  the  actual,  so  long  as  our 
credit  remains  good.  It  is  evident  that  for  the 
most  part  it  is  good,  and  that  the  universe 
seldom  protests  our  drafts. 

In  this  sense  we  at  every  moment  can  con- 
tinue to  believe  in  an  existing  beyond.  It  is 
only  in  special  cases  that  our  confident  rush 
forward  gets  rebuked.  The  beyond  must,  of 
course,  always  in  our  philosophy  be  itself  of  an 
experiential  nature.  If  not  a  future  experience 
of  our  own  or  a  present  one  of  our  neighbor,  it 
must  be  a  thing  in  itself  in  Dr.  Prince's  and 
Professor  Strong's  sense  of  the  term  —  that  is, 
it  must  be  an  experience  for  itself  whose  rela- 
tion to  other  things  we  translate  into  the  action 

88 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

of  molecules,  ether-waves,  or  whatever  else  the 
physical  symbols  may  be.1  This  opens  the 
chapter  of  the  relations  of  radical  empiricism 
to  panpsychism,  into  which  I  can  not  enter 
now.2 

The  beyond  can  in  any  case  exist  simultane- 
ously —  for  it  can  be  experienced  to  have  ex- 
isted simultaneously  —  with  the  experience 
that  practically  postulates  it  by  looking  in  its 
direction,  or  by  turning  or  changing  in  the 
direction  of  which  it  is  the  goal.  Pending  that 
actuality  of  union,  in  the  virtuality  of  which 
the  *  truth,'  even  now,  of  the  postulation  con- 
sists, the  beyond  and  its  knower  are  entities 
split  off  from  each  other.  The  world  is  in  so  far 
forth  a  pluralism  of  which  the  unity  is  not  fully 
experienced  as  yet.  But,  as  fast  as  verifications 
come,  trains  of  experience,  once  separate,  run 
into  one  another;  and  that  is  why  I  said,  earlier 

1  Our  minds  and  these  ejective  realities  would  still  have  space  (or 
pseudo-space,  as  I  believe  Professor  Strong  calls  the  medium  of  inter- 
action between  '  things-in-themselves ')  in  common.  These  would 
exist  where,  and  begin  to  act  where,  we  locate  the  molecules,  etc.,  and 
where  we  perceive  the  sensible  phenomena  explained  thereby.  [Cf. 
Morton  Prince:  The  Nature  of  Mind,  and  Human  Automatism,  part  I, 
ch.  in,  iv ;  C.  A.  Strong:  Why  the  Mind  Has  a  Body,  ch.  xn.] 

2  [Cf .  below,  p.  188;  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  Lect.  rv-vii.] 

89 


ess;ays  in  radical  empiricism 

in  my  article,  that  the  unity  of  the  world  is  on 
the  whole  undergoing  increase.  The  universe 
continually  grows  in  quantity  by  new  experi- 
ences that  graft  themselves  upon  the  older 
mass;  but  these  very  new  experiences  often 
help  the  mass  to  a  more  consolidated  form. 

These  are  the  main  features  of  a  philosophy 
of  pure  experience.  It  has  innumerable  other 
aspects  and  arouses  innumerable  questions, 
but  the  points  I  have  touched  on  seem  enough 
to  make  an  entering  wedge.  In  my  own  mind 
such  a  philosophy  harmonizes  best  with  a  radi- 
cal pluralism,  with  novelty  and  indeterminism, 
moralism  and  theism,  and  with  the  'human- 
ism '  lately  sprung  upon  us  by  the  Oxford  and 
the  Chicago  schools.1  I  can  not,  however,  be 
sure  that  all  these  doctrines  are  its  necessary 
and  indispensable  allies.  It  presents  so  many 
points  of  difference,  both  from  the  common 
sense  and  from  the  idealism  that  have  made 
our  philosophic  language,  that  it  is  almost  as 

1  I  have  said  something  of  this  latter  alliance  in  an  article  entitled 
'Humanism  and  Truth,'  in  Mind,  October,  1904.  [Reprinted  in  The 
Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  51-101.  Cf.  also  "Humanism  and  Truth  Once 
More,"  below,  pp.  244-265.] 

90 


WORLD  OF  PURE  EXPERIENCE 

difficult  to  state  it  as  it  is  to  think  it  out 
clearly,  and  if  it  is  ever  to  grow  into  a  respect- 
able system,  it  will  have  to  be  built  up  by  the 
contributions  of  many  co-operating  minds.  It 
seems  to  me,  as  I  said  at  the  outset  of  this  es- 
say, that  many  minds  are,  in  point  of  fact,  now 
turning  in  a  direction  that  points  towards  radi- 
cal empiricism.  If  they  are  carried  farther  by 
my  words,  and  if  then  they  add  their  stronger 
voices  to  my  feebler  one,  the  publication  of 
this  essay  will  have  been  worth  while. 


Ill 

THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS* 

Experience  in  its  immediacy  seems  per- 
fectly fluent.  The  active  sense  of  living  which 
we  all  enjoy,  before  reflection  shatters  our  in- 
stinctive world  for  us,  is  self-luminous  and  sug- 
gests no  paradoxes.  Its  difficulties  are  disap- 
pointments and  uncertainties.  They  are  not 
intellectual  contradictions. 

When  the  reflective  intellect  gets  at  work, 
however,  it  discovers  incomprehensibilities  in 
the  flowing  process.  Distinguishing  its  ele- 
ments and  parts,  it  gives  them  separate  names, 
and  what  it  thus  disjoins  it  can  not  easily  put 
together.  Pyrrhonism  accepts  the  irration- 
ality and  revels  in  its  dialectic  elaboration. 
Other  philosophies  try,  some  by  ignoring, 
some  by  resisting,  and  some  by  turning  the 
dialectic  procedure  against  itself,  negating  its 
first  negations,  to  restore  the  fluent  sense  of 

1  [Reprinted  from  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  II,  No.  2,  January  19,  1905.  Reprinted  also 
as  Appendix  A  in  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  pp.  347-369.  The  author's 
corrections  have  been  adopted  in  the  present  text.  Ed.] 

92 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

life  again,  and  let  redemption  take  the  place  of 
innocence.  The  perfection  with  which  any 
philosophy  may  do  this  is  the  measure  of  its 
human  success  and  of  its  importance  in  philo- 
sophic history.  In  [the  last  essay],  'A  World 
of  Pure  Experience/  I  tried  my  own  hand 
sketchily  at  the  problem,  resisting  certain 
first  steps  of  dialectics  by  insisting  in  a  general 
way  that  the  immediately  experienced  con- 
junctive relations  are  as  real  as  anything  else. 
If  my  sketch  is  not  to  appear  too  naif,  I  must 
come  closer  to  details,  and  in  the  present  essay 
I  propose  to  do  so. 


'Pure  experience'  is  the  name  which  I  gave 
to  the  immediate  flux  of  life  which  furnishes 
the  material  to  our  later  reflection  with  its 
conceptual  categories.  Only  new-born  babes, 
or  men  in  semi-coma  from  sleep,  drugs,  ill- 
nesses, or  blows,  may  be  assumed  to  have  an 
experience  pure  in  the  literal  sense  of  a  that 
which  is  not  yet  any  definite  what,  tho'  ready 
to  be  all  sorts  of  whats;  full  both  of  oneness 

93 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

and  of  manyness,  but  in  respects  that  don't 
appear;  changing  throughout,  yet  so  confus- 
edly that  its  phases  interpenetrate  and  no 
points,  either  of  distinction  or  of  identity, 
can  be  caught.  Pure  experience  in  this  state 
is  but  another  name  for  feeling  or  sensation. 
But  the  flux  of  it  no  sooner  comes  than  it 
tends  to  fill  itself  with  emphases,  and  these 
salient  parts  become  identified  and  fixed  and 
abstracted;  so  that  experience  now  flows  as  if 
shot  through  with  adjectives  and  nouns  and 
prepositions  and  conjunctions.  Its  purity  is 
only  a  relative  term,  meaning  the  propor- 
tional amount  of  unverbalized  sensation  which 
it  still  embodies. 

Far  back  as  we  go,  the  flux,  both  as  a  whole 
and  in  its  parts,  is  that  of  things  conjunct  and 
separated.  The  great  continua  of  time,  space, 
and  the  self  envelope  everything,  betwixt 
them,  and  flow  together  without  interfering. 
The  things  that  they  envelope  come  as  separate 
in  some  ways  and  as  continuous  in  others. 
Some  sensations  coalesce  with  some  ideas,  and 
others  are  irreconcilable.    Qualities  compen- 

94 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

etrate  one  space,  or  exclude  each  other  from  it. 
They  cling  together  persistently  in  groups  that 
move  as  units,  or  else  they  separate.  Their 
changes  are  abrupt  or  discontinuous;  and  their 
kinds  resemble  or  differ;  and,  as  they  do  so, 
they  fall  into  either  even  or  irregular  series. 

In  all  this  the  continuities  and  the  discon- 
tinuities are  absolutely  co-ordinate  matters  of 
immediate  feeling.  The  conjunctions  are  as 
primordial  elements  of  'fact'  as  are  the  dis- 
tinctions and  disjunctions.  In  the  same  act  by 
which  I  feel  that  this  passing  minute  is  a  new 
pulse  of  my  life,  I  feel  that  the  old  life  con- 
tinues into  it,  and  the  feeling  of  continuance  in 
no  wise  jars  upon  the  simultaneous  feeling  of  a 
novelty.  They,  too,  compenetrate  harmoni- 
ously. Prepositions,  copulas,  and  conjunctions, 
'is,'  'is  n't,'  'then,' ' before,'  'in,'  'on,' ' beside,' 
'between,'  'next,'  'like,'  'unlike,'  'as,'  'but,' 
flower  out  of  the  stream  of  pure  experience,  the 
stream  of  concretes  or  the  sensational  stream, 
as  naturally  as  nouns  and  adjectives  do,  and 
they  melt  into  it  again  as  fluidly  when  we 
apply  them  to  a  new  portion  of  the  stream. 

95 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

II 

If  now  we  ask  why  we  must  thus  translate 
experience  from  a  more  concrete  or  pure  into  a 
more  intellectualized  form,  filling  it  with  ever 
more  abounding  conceptual  distinctions,  ra- 
tionalism and  naturalism  give  different  replies. 

The  rationalistic  answer  is  that  the  theoretic 
life  is  absolute  and  its  interests  imperative; 
that  to  understand  is  simply  the  duty  of  man; 
and  that  who  questions  this  need  not  be  argued 
with,  for  by  the  fact  of  arguing  he  gives  away 
his  case. 

The  naturalist  answer  is  that  the  environ- 
ment kills  as  well  as  sustains  us,  and  that  the 
tendency  of  raw  experience  to  extinguish  the 
experient  himself  is  lessened  just  in  the  degree 
in  which  the  elements  in  it  that  have  a  practi- 
cal bearing  upon  life  are  analyzed  out  of  the 
continuum  and  verbally  fixed  and  coupled  to- 
gether, so  that  we  may  know  what  is  in  the 
wind  for  us  and  get  ready  to  react  in  time. 
Had  pure  experience,  the  naturalist  says,  been 
always  perfectly  healthy,  there  would  never 

96 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

have  arisen  the  necessity  of  isolating  or  ver- 
balizing any  of  its  terms.  We  should  just  have 
experienced  inarticulately  and  unintellectually 
enjoyed.  This  leaning  on  *  reaction'  in  the 
naturalist  account  implies  that,  whenever  we 
intellectualize  a  relatively  pure  experience,  we 
ought  to  do  so  for  the  sake  of  redescending 
to  the  purer  or  more  concrete  level  again; 
and  that  if  an  intellect  stays  aloft  among  its 
abstract  terms  and  generalized  relations,  and 
does  not  reinsert  itself  with  its  conclusions  into 
some  particular  point  of  the  immediate  stream 
of  life,  it  fails  to  finish  out  its  function  and 
leaves  its  normal  race  unrun. 

Most  rationalists  nowadays  will  agree  that 
naturalism  gives  a  true  enough  account  of  the 
way  in  which  our  intellect  arose  at  first,  but 
they  will  deny  these  latter  implications.  The 
case,  they  will  say,  resembles  that  of  sexual 
love.  Originating  in  the  animal  need  of  getting 
another  generation  born,  this  passion  has  de- 
veloped secondarily  such  imperious  spiritual 
needs  that,  if  you  ask  why  another  generation 
ought  to  be  born  at  all,  the  answer  is :  *  Chiefly 

97 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

that  love  may  go  on.'  Just  so  with  our  intel- 
lect :  it  originated  as  a  practical  means  of  serv- 
ing life;  but  it  has  developed  incidentally  the 
function  of  understanding  absolute  truth;  and 
life  itself  now  seems  to  be  given  chiefly  as  a 
means  by  which  that  function  may  be  prose- 
cuted. But  truth  and  the  understanding  of  it 
lie  among  the  abstracts  and  universals,  so  the 
intellect  now  carries  on  its  higher  business 
wholly  in  this  region,  without  any  need  of 
redescending  into  pure  experience  again. 

If  the  contrasted  tendencies  which  I  thus 
designate  as  naturalistic  and  rationalistic  are 
not  recognized  by  the  reader,  perhaps  an  ex- 
ample will  make  them  more  concrete.  Mr. 
Bradley,  for  instance,  is  an  ultra-rationalist. 
He  admits  that  our  intellect  is  primarily  prac- 
tical, but  says  that,  for  philosophers,  the  prac- 
tical need  is  simply  Truth.  Truth,  moreover, 
must  be  assumed  'consistent.'  Immediate  ex- 
perience has  to  be  broken  into  subjects  and 
qualities,  terms  and  relations,  to  be  understood 
as  truth  at  all.  Yet  when  so  broken  it  is  less 
consistent  then  ever.  Taken  raw,  it  is  all  un- 

98 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

distinguished.  Intellectualized,  it  is  all  dis- 
tinction without  oneness.  'Such  an  arrange- 
ment may  work,  but  the  theoretic  problem  is 
not  solved. '  The  question  is  'how  the  diversity 
can  exist  in  harmony  with  the  oneness.'  To  go 
back  to  pure  experience  is  unavailing.  'Mere 
feeling  gives  no  answer  to  our  riddle.'  Even  if 
your  intuition  is  a  fact,  it  is  not  an  understand- 
ing. 'It  is  a  mere  experience,  and  furnishes 
no  consistent  view.'  The  experience  offered  as 
facts  or  truths  'I  find  that  my  intellect  rejects 
because  they  contradict  themselves.  They 
offer  a  complex  of  diversities  conjoined  in  a 
way  which  it  feels  is  not  its  way  and  which  it 
can  not  repeat  as  its  own.  .  .  .  For  to  be  satis- 
fied, my  intellect  must  understand,  and  it  can 
not  understand  by  taking  a  congeries  in  the 
lump.' *  So  Mr.  Bradley,  in  the  sole  interests 
of  'understanding'  (as  he  conceives  that  func- 
tion), turns  his  back  on  finite  experience  for- 
ever. Truth  must  lie  in  the  opposite  direction, 
the  direction  of  the  Absolute;  and  this  kind  of 


1  [F.  H.   Bradley:  Appearance  and  Reality,  second  edition,  pp. 
152-153,  23,  118,  104,  108-109,  570.] 

99 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

rationalism  and  naturalism,  or  (as  I  will  now 
call  it)  pragmatism,  walk  thenceforward  upon 
opposite  paths.  For  the  one,  those  intellectual 
products  are  most  true  which,  turning  their 
face  towards  the  Absolute,  come  nearest  to 
symbolizing  its  ways  of  uniting  the  many  and 
the  one.  For  the  other,  those  are  most  true 
which  most  successfully  dip  back  into  the 
finite  stream  of  feeling  and  grow  most  easily 
confluent  with  some  particular  wave  or  wave- 
let. Such  confluence  not  only  proves  the  in- 
tellectual operation  to  have  been  true  (as  an 
addition  may  *  prove*  that  a  subtraction  is 
already  rightly  performed),  but  it  constitutes, 
according  to  pragmatism,  all  that  we  mean  by 
calling  it  true.  Only  in  so  far  as  they  lead  us, 
successfully  or  unsuccessfully,  back  into  sen- 
sible experience  again,  are  our  abstracts  and 
universals  true  or  false  at  all.1 


Ill 

In  Section  VI  of  [the  last  essay],  I  adopted 

1  Compare  Professor  MacLennan's  admirable  Auseinandersetzung 
with  Mr.  Bradley,  in  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  I,  [1904],  pp.  403  II.,  especially  pp.  405-407. 

100 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

in  a  general  way  the  common-sense  belief  that 
one  and  the  same  world  is  cognized  by  our 
different  minds;  but  I  left  undiscussed  the 
dialectical  arguments  which  maintain  that 
this  is  logically  absurd.  The  usual  reason 
given  for  its  being  absurd  is  that  it  assumes 
one  object  (to  wit,  the  world)  to  stand  in  two 
relations  at  once;  to  my  mind,  namely,  and 
again  to  yours;  whereas  a  term  taken  in  a 
second  relation  can  not  logically  be  the  same 
term  which  it  was  at  first. 

I  have  heard  this  reason  urged  so  often  in 
discussing  with  absolutists,  and  it  would  de- 
stroy my  radical  empiricism  so  utterly,  if  it 
were  valid,  that  I  am  bound  to  give  it  an  atten- 
tive ear,  and  seriously  to  search  its  strength. 

For  instance,  let  the  matter  in  dispute  be 
term  M9  asserted  to  be  on  the  one  hand  related 
to  Z,  and  on  the  other  to  N;  and  let  the  two 
cases  of  relation  be  symbolized  by  L  —  M  and 
M  —  N  respectively.  When,  now,  I  assume 
that  the  experience  may  immediately  come 
and  be  given  in  the  shape  L  —  M  —  N9  with 
no  trace  of  doubling  or  internal  fission  in  the 

101 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

My  I  am  told  that  this  is  all  a  popular  delusion; 
that  L  —  M  —  N  logically  means  two  differ- 
ent experiences,  L  —  M  and  M  — N,  namely; 
and  that  although  the  Absolute  may,  and  in- 
deed must,  from  its  superior  point  of  view, 
read  its  own  kind  of  unity  into  M's  two  edi- 
tions, yet  as  elements  in  finite  experience  the 
two  M's  lie  irretrievably  asunder,  and  the 
world  between  them  is  broken  and  unbridged. 
In  arguing  this  dialectic  thesis,  one  must 
avoid  slipping  from  the  logical  into  the  physi- 
cal point  of  view.  It  would  be  easy,  in  taking 
a  concrete  example  to  fix  one's  ideas  by,  to 
choose  one  in  which  the  letter  M  should  stand 
for  a  collective  noun  of  some  sort,  which  noun, 
being  related  to  L  by  one  of  its  parts  and  to 
N  by  another,  would  inwardly  be  two  things 
when  it  stood  outwardly  in  both  relations. 
Thus,  one  might  say:  *  David  Hume,  who 
weighed  so  many  stone  by  his  body,  influences 
posterity  by  his  doctrine/  The  body  and  the 
doctrine  are  two  things,  between  which  our 
finite  minds  can  discover  no  real  sameness, 

though  the  same  name  covers  both  of  them. 

102 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

And  then,  one  might  continue :  *  Only  an  Abso- 
lute is  capable  of  uniting  such  a  non-identity.' 
We  must,  I  say,  avoid  this  sort  of  example,  for 
the  dialectic  insight,  if  true  at  all,  must  apply 
to  terms  and  relations  universally.  It  must  be 
true  of  abstract  units  as  well  as  of  nouns  col- 
lective; and  if  we  prove  it  by  concrete  examples 
we  must  take  the  simplest,  so  as  to  avoid 
irrelevant  material  suggestions. 

Taken  thus  in  all  its  generality,  the  abso- 
lutist contention  seems  to  use  as  its  major 
premise  Hume's  notion  'that  all  our  distinct 
perceptions  are  distinct  existences,  and  that 
the  mind  never  perceives  any  real  connexion 
among  distinct  existences.' l  Undoubtedly, 
since  we  use  two  phrases  in  talking  first  about 
*iW's  relation  to  U  and  then  about  '  J/'s  rela- 
tion to  N, '  we  must  be  having,  or  must  have 
had,  two  distinct  perceptions;  — and  the  rest 
would  then  seem  to  follow  duly.  But  the  start- 
ing-point of  the  reasoning  here  seems  to  be  the 
fact  of  the  two  phrases;  and  this  suggests  that 

1  [Hume:  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  Appendix,  Selby-Bigge's 
edition,  p.  636.] 

103 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

the  argument  may  be  merely  verbal.  Can  it  be 
that  the  whole  dialectic  consists  in  attributing 
to  the  experience  talked-about  a  constitution 
similar  to  that  of  the  language  in  which  we  de- 
scribe it?  Must  we  assert  the  objective  double- 
ness  of  the  M  merely  because  we  have  to  name 
it  twice  over  when  we  name  its  two  relations  ? 
Candidly,  I  can  think  of  no  other  reason 
than  this  for  the  dialectic  conclusion;  *  for,  if 
we  think,  not  of  our  words,  but  of  any  simple 
concrete  matter  which  they  may  be  held  to 
signify,  the  experience  itself  belies  the  paradox 
asserted.  We  use  indeed  two  separate  concepts 
in  analyzing  our  object,  but  we  know  them  all 
the  while  to  be  but  substitutional,  and  that  the 
M  in  L  —  M  and  the  M  in  M  —  N  mean  ( i.  e., 
are  capable  of  leading  to  and  terminating  in) 
one  self-same  piece,  M ,  of  sensible  experience. 
This  persistent  identity  of  certain  units  (or 
emphases,  or  points,  or  objects,  or  members  — 
call  them  what  you  will)  of  the  experience- 
continuum,  is  just  one  of  those  conjunctive 

1  Technically,  it  seems  classable  as  a  'fallacy  of  composition.'  A 
duality,  predicable  of  the  two  wholes,  L  —  M  and  M  —  N,  is 
forthwith  predicated  of  one  of  their  parts,  M. 

104 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

features  of  it,  on  which  I  am  obliged  to  insist 
so  emphatically.1  For  samenesses  are  parts  of 
experience's  indefeasible  structure.  When  I 
hear  a  bell-stroke  and,  as  life  flows  on,  its  after 
image  dies  away,  I  still  hark  back  to  it  as  '  that 
same  bell-stroke.'  When  I  see  a  thing  M9  with 
L  to  the  left  of  it  and  N  to  the  right  of  it,  I  see 
it  as  one  M;  and  if  you  tell  me  I  have  had 
to  'take'  it  twice,  I  reply  that  if  I  'took'  it  a 
thousand  times  I  should  still  see  it  as  a  unit.2 
Its  unity  is  aboriginal,  just  as  the  multipli- 
city of  my  successive  takings  is  aboriginal.  It 
comes  unbroken  as  that  M,  as  a  singular  which 
I  encounter;  they  come  broken,  as  those  tak- 
ings, as  my  plurality  of  operations.  The  unity 
and  the  separateness  are  strictly  co-ordinate.  I 
do  not  easily  fathom  why  my  opponents  should 
find  the  separateness  so  much  more  easily  un- 
derstandable that  they  must  needs  infect  the 
whole  of  finite  experience  with  it,  and  relegate 

1  See  above,  pp.  42  ff. 

2  I  may  perhaps  refer  here  to  my  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  I, 
pp.  459  ff.  It  really  seems  'weird'  to  have  to  argue  (as  I  am  forced 
now  to  do)  for  the  notion  that  it  is  one  sheet  of  paper  (with  its  two 
surfaces  and  all  that  lies  between)  which  is  both  under  my  pen  and  on 
the  table  while  I  write  —  the  'claim'  that  it  is  two  sheets  seems  so 
brazen.  Yet  I  sometimes  suspect  the  absolutists  of  sincerity! 

105 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

the  unity  (now  taken  as  a  bare  postulate  and 
no  longer  as  a  thing  positively  perceivable)  to 
the  region  of  the  Absolute's  mysteries.  I  do 
not  easily  fathom  this,  I  say,  for  the  said  oppo- 
nents are  above  mere  verbal  quibbling;  yet  all 
that  I  can  catch  in  their  talk  is  the  substitu- 
tion of  what  is  true  of  certain  words  for  what  is 
true  of  what  they  signify.  They  stay  with  the 
words,  —  not  returning  to  the  stream  of  life 
whence  all  the  meaning  of  them  came,  and 
which  is  always  ready  to  reabsorb  them. 

IV 

For  aught  this  argument  proves,  then,  we 
may  continue  to  believe  that  one  thing  can  be 
known  by  many  knowers.  But  the  denial  of 
one  thing  in  many  relations  is  but  one  applica- 
tion of  a  still  profounder  dialectic  difficulty. 
Man  can't  be  good,  said  the  sophists,  for  man  is 
man  and  good  is  good;  and  Hegel  *  and  Herbart 
in  their  day,  more  recently  A.  Spir,2  and  most 

1  [For  the  author's  criticism  of  Ilegel's  view  of  relations,  cf. 
Will  to  Believe,  pp.  278-279.  Ed.] 

2  [Cf.  A.  Spir:  Denken  und  Wirldichkeit,  part  I,  bk.  Ill,  ch.  IV 
(containing  also  account  of  Ilerbart).  Ed.] 

106 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

recently  and  elaborately  of  all,  Mr.  Bradley, 
informs  us  that  a  term  can  logically  only  be 
a  punctiform  unit,  and  that  not  one  of  the 
conjunctive  relations  between  things,  which 
experience  seems  to  yield,  is  rationally  pos- 
sible. 

Of  course,  if  true,  this  cuts  off  radical  empiri- 
cism without  even  a  shilling.  Radical  empiri- 
cism takes  conjunctive  relations  at  their  face 
value,  holding  them  to  be  as  real  as  the  terms 
united  by  them.1  The  world  it  represents  as  a 
collection,  some  parts  of  which  are  conjunc- 
tively and  others  disjunctively  related.  Two 
parts,  themselves  disjoined,  may  nevertheless 
hang  together  by  intermediaries  with  which 
they  are  severally  connected,  and  the  whole 
world  eventually  may  hang  together  similarly, 
inasmuch  as  some  path  of  conjunctive  transi- 
tion by  which  to  pass  from  one  of  its  parts 
to  another  may  always  be  discernible.  Such 
determinately  various  hanging-together  may 
be  called  concatenated  union,  to  distinguish  it 
from  the  'through-and-through'  type  of  union, 

1  [See  above,  pp.  42,  49.] 
107 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

'each  in  all  and  all  in  each*  (union  of  total 
conflux,  as  one  might  call  it),  which  monistic 
systems  hold  to  obtain  when  things  are  taken 
in  their  absolute  reality.  In  a  concatenated 
world  a  partial  conflux  often  is  experienced. 
Our  concepts  and  our  sensations  are  confluent; 
successive  states  of  the  same  ego,  and  feelings 
of  the  same  body  are  confluent.  Where  the 
experience  is  not  of  conflux,  it  may  be  of 
conterminousness  (things  with  but  one  thing 
between);  or  of  contiguousness  (nothing  be- 
tween); or  of  likeness;  or  of  nearness;  or  of 
simultaneousness;  or  of  in-ness;  or  of  on-ness; 
or  of  for-ness;  or  of  simple  with-ness;  or  even  of 
mere  and-ness,  which  last  relation  would  make 
of  however  disjointed  a  world  otherwise,  at  any 
rate  for  that  occasion  a  universe  'of  discourse.' 
Now  Mr.  Bradley  tells  us  that  none  of  these 
relations,  as  we  actually  experience  them,  can 
possibly  be  real.1  My  next  duty,  accordingly, 

1  Here  again  the  reader  must  beware  of  slipping  from  logical  into 
phenomenal  considerations.  It  may  well  be  that  we  attribute  a  certain 
relation  falsely,  because  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  being  complex, 
have  deceived  us.  At  a  railway  station  we  may  take  our  own  train, 
and  not  the  one  that  fills  our  window,  to  be  moving.  We  here  put 
motion  in  the  wrong  place  in  the  world,  but  in  its  original  place  the 

108 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

must  be  to  rescue  radical  empiricism  from  Mr. 
Bradley.  Fortunately,  as  it  seems  to  me,  his 
general  contention,  that  the  very  notion  of  re- 
lation is  unthinkable  clearly,  has  been  success- 
fully met  by  many  critics.1 

It  is  a  burden  to  the  flesh,  and  an  injustice 
both  to  readers  and  to  the  previous  writers,  to 
repeat  good  arguments  already  printed.  So,  in 
noticing  Mr.  Bradley,  I  will  confine  myself  to 
the  interests  of  radical  empiricism  solely. 


The  first  duty  of  radical  empiricism,  taking 
given  conjunctions  at  their  face-value,  is  to 
class  some  of  them  as  more  intimate  and  some 
as  more  external.  When  two  terms  are  simi- 
lar, their  very  natures  enter  into  the  relation. 

motion  is  a  part  of  reality.  What  Mr.  Bradley  means  is  nothing  like 
this,  but  rather  that  such  things  as  motion  are  nowhere  real,  and 
that,  even  in  their  aboriginal  and  empirically  incorrigible  seats,  rela- 
tions are  impossible  of  comprehension. 

1  Particularly  so  by  Andrew  Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  in  his  Man  and 
the  Cosmos;  by  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  in  chapter  xn  ("The  Validity  of 
Judgment ")  of  his  Theory  of  Knowledge;  and  by  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  in  his 
Humanism,  essay  xi.  Other  fatal  reviews  (in  my  opinion)  are  Hod- 
der's,  in  the  Psychological  Review,  vol.  i,  [1894],  p.  307;  Stout's  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  1901-2,  p.  1;  and  MacLennan's 
in  [The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods, 
vol.  i,  1904,  p.  403]. 

109 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

Being  what  they  are,  no  matter  where  or  when, 
the  likeness  never  can  be  denied,  if  asserted. 
It  continues  predicable  as  long  as  the  terms 
continue.  Other  relations,  the  where  and  the 
when,  for  example,  seem  adventitious.  The 
sheet  of  paper  may  be  'off '  or  'on'  the  table, 
for  example;  and  in  either  case  the  relation 
involves  only  the  outside  of  its  terms.  Having 
an  outside,  both  of  them,  they  contribute  by  it 
to  the  relation.  It  is  external:  the  term's  inner 
nature  is  irrelevant  to  it.  Any  book,  any  table, 
may  fall  into  the  relation,  which  is  created  pro 
hac  vice,  not  by  their  existence,  but  by  their 
casual  situation.  It  is  just  because  so  many  of 
the  conjunctions  of  experience  seem  so  external 
that  a  philosophy  of  pure  experience  must  tend 
to  pluralism  in  its  ontology.  So  far- as  things 
have  space-relations,  for  example,  we  are  free 
to  imagine  them  with  different  origins  even.  If 
they  could  get  to  be,  and  get  into  space  at  all, 
then  they  may  have  done  so  separately.  Once 
there,  however,  they  are  additives  to  one  an- 
other, and,  with  no  prejudice  to  their  natures, 

all  sorts  of  space-relations  may  supervene  be- 

110 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

tween  them.  The  question  of  how  things  could 
come  to  be  anyhow,  is  wholly  different  from 
the  question  what  their  relations,  once  the 
being  accomplished,  may  consist  in. 

Mr.  Bradley  now  affirms  that  such  external 
relations  as  the  space-relations  which  we  here 
talk  of  must  hold  of  entirely  different  subjects 
from  those  of  which  the  absence  of  such  rela- 
tions might  a  moment  previously  have  been 
plausibly  asserted.  Not  only  is  the  situation 
different  when  the  book  is  on  the  table,  but 
the  book  itself  is  different  as  a  book,  from  what 
it  was  when  it  was  off  the  table.1  He  admits 
that  "such  external  relations  seem  possible 
and  even  existing.  .  .  .  That  you  do  not  alter 
what  you  compare  or  rearrange  in  space  seems 
to  common  sense  quite  obvious,  and  that  on 

1  Once  more,  don't  slip  from  logical  into  physical  situations.  Of 
course,  if  the  table  be  wet,  it  will  moisten  the  book,  or  if  it  be  slight 
enough  and  the  book  heavy  enough,  the  book  will  break  it  down.  But 
such  collateral  phenomena  are  not  the  point  at  issue.  The  point  is 
whether  the  successive  relations  '  on '  and  '  not-on '  can  rationally  (not 
physically)  hold  of  the  same  constant  terms,  abstractly  taken.  Pro- 
fessor A.  E.  Taylor  drops  from  logical  into  material  considerations 
when  he  instances  color-contrast  as  a  proof  that  A,  'as  contra- 
distinguished from  B,  is  not  the  same  thing  as  mere  A  not  in  any  way 
affected'  (Elements  of  Metaphysics,  p.  145).  Note  the  substitution, 
for  'related'  of  the  word  'affected,'  which  begs  the  whole  question. 

Ill 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

the  other  side  there  are  as  obvious  difficulties 
does  not  occur  to  common  sense  at  all.  And  I 
will  begin  by  pointing  out  these  difficulties. . . . 
There  is  a  relation  in  the  result,  and  this  rela- 
tion, we  hear,  is  to  make  no  difference  in  its 
terms.  But,  if  so,  to  what  does  it  make  a  dif- 
ference? [Does  rit  it  make  a  difference  to  us  on- 
lookers, at  least  ?]  and  what  is  the  meaning  and 
sense  of  qualifying  the  terms  by  it?  [Surely  the 
meaning  is  to  tell  the  truth  about  their  relative 
position.1]  If,  in  short,  it  is  external  to  the  terms, 
how  can  it  possibly  be  true  of  them?  [I  sit  the 
'intimacy'  suggested  by  the  little  word ' of, '  here, 
which  1  have  underscored,  that  is  the  root  of  Mr. 
Bradley' 's  trouble  ?]  .  .  .  If  the  terms  from  their 
inner  nature  do  not  enter  into  the  relation, 
then,  so  far  as  they  are  concerned,  they  seem 
related  for  no  reason  at  all.  .  .  .  Things  are  spa- 
tially related,  first  in  one  way,  and  then  be- 
come related  in  another  way,  and  yet  in  no 
way  themselves  are  altered;  for  the  relations, 
it  is  said,  are  but  external.  But  I  reply  that,  if 

1  But  "is  there  any  sense,"  asks  Mr.  Bradley,  peevishly,  on  p.  579, 
"and  if  so,  what  sense  in  truth  that  is  only  outside  and  'about' 
things?  "  Surely  such  a  question  may  be  left  unanswered. 

112 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

so,  I  can  not  understand  the  leaving  by  the 
terms  of  one  set  of  relations  and  their  adop- 
tion of  another  fresh  set.  The  process  and  its 
result  to  the  terms,  if  they  contribute  nothing 
to  it  [Surely  they  contribute  to  it  all  there  is 
'of*  it!]  seem  irrational  throughout.  [//  ' irra- 
tional '  here  means  simply '  non-rational,'  or  non- 
deducible  from  the  essence  of  either  term  singly,  it 
is  no  reproach;  if  it  means  'contradicting*  such 
essence,  Mr.  Bradley  should  show  wherein  and 
how.]  But,  if  they  contribute  anything, .  they 
must  surely  be  affected  internally.  [Why  so, 
if  they  contribute  only  their  surface  ?  In  such 
relations  as  'on,'  'afoot  away,'  'between,'  'next,' 
etc.,  only  surfaces  are  in  question.]  ...  If  the 
terms  contribute  anything  whatever,  then  the 
terms  are  affected  [inwardly  altered?]  by  the 
arrangement.  .  .  .  That  for  working  purposes 
we  treat,  and  do  well  to  treat,  some  relations 
as  external  merely  I  do  not  deny,  and  that  of 
course  is  not  the  question  at  issue  here.  That 
question  is  .  .  .  whether  in  the  end  and  in 
principle  a  mere  external  relation  [i.  e.,  a  rela- 
tion which  can  change  without  forcing  its  terms 

113 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

to  change  their  nature  simultaneously]  is  possi- 
ble and  forced  on  us  by  the  facts."  1 

Mr.  Bradley  next  reverts  to  the  antinomies 
of  space,  which,  according  to  him,  prove  it  to 
be  unreal,  although  it  appears  as  so  prolific  a 
medium  of  external  relations;  and  he  then  con- 
cludes that  "Irrationality  and  externality  can 
not  be  the  last  truth  about  things.  Somewhere 
there  must  be  a  reason  why  this  and  that  ap- 
pear together.  And  this  reason  and  reality 
must  reside  in  the  whole  from  which  terms  and 
relations  are  abstractions,  a  whole  in  which 
their  internal  connection  must  lie,  and  out  of 
which  from  the  background  appear  those  fresh 
results  which  never  could  have  come  from 
the  premises."  And  he  adds  that  "Where  the 
whole  is  different,  the  terms  that  qualify  and 
contribute  to  it  must  so  far  be  different.  .  .  . 
They  are  altered  so  far  only  [How  far  ?  farther 
than  externally,  yet  not  through  and  through  ?] 
but  still  they  are  altered.  ...  I  must  insist 
that  in  each  case  the  terms  are  qualified  by 
their  whole  [Qualified  how  ?  — Do  their  external 

}  Appearance  and  Reality,  second  edition,  pp.  575-576. 
114 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

relations,  situations,  dates,  etc.,  changed  as  these 
are  in  the  new  whole,  fail  to  qualify  them  'far* 
enough  ?],  and  that  in  the  second  case  there  is  a 
whole  which  differs  both  logically  and  psycho- 
logically from  the  first  whole;  and  I  urge  that 
in  contributing  to  the  change  the  terms  so  far 
are  altered." 

Not  merely  the  relations,  then,  but  the  terms 
are  altered:  und  zwar  'so  far.'  But  just  how 
far  is  the  whole  problem;  and  'through-and- 
through '  would  seem  (in  spite  of  Mr.  Bradley's 
somewhat  undecided  utterances  l)  to  be  the 

1  I  say  'undecided,'  because,  apart  from  the  'so  far,'  which  sounds 
terribly  half-hearted,  there  are  passages  in  these  very  pages  in  which 
Mr.  Bradley  admits  the  pluralistic  thesis.  Read,  for  example,  what  he 
says,  on  p.  578,  of  a  billiard  ball  keeping  its  'character'  unchanged, 
though,  in  its  change  of  place,  its  'existence'  gets  altered;  or  what  he 
says,  on  p.  579,  of  the  possibility  that  an  abstract  quality  A,  B,  or  C, 
in  a  thing, '  may  throughout  remain  unchanged '  although  the  thing  be 
altered;  or  his  admission  that  in  red-hairedness,  both  as  analyzed  out 
of  a  man  and  when  given  with  the  rest  of  him,  there  may  be  'no 
change'  (p.  580).  Why  does  he  immediately  add  that  for  the  pluralist 
to  plead  the  non-mutation  of  such  abstractions  would  be  an  ignoratio 
elenchi?  It  is  impossible  to  admit  it  to  be  such.  The  entire  elenchus 
and  inquest  is  just  as  to  whether  parts  which  you  can  abstract  from 
existing  wholes  can  also  contribute  to  other  wholes  without  changing 
their  inner  nature.  If  they  can  thus  mould  various  wholes  into  new 
gestaltqualitiiten,  then  it  follows  that  the  same  elements  are  logically 
able  to  exist  in  different  wholes  [whether  physically  able  would  depend 
on  additional  hypotheses];  that  partial  changes  are  thinkable,  and 
through-and-through  change  not  a  dialectic  necessity;  that  monism 
is  only  an  hypothesis;  and  that  an  additively  constituted  universe 

115 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

full  Bradleyan  answer.  The  *  whole'  which  he 
here  treats  as  primary  and  determinative  of 
each  part's  manner  of  '  contributing,'  simply 
musty  when  it  alters,  alter  in  its  entirety.  There 
must  be  total  conflux  of  its  parts,  each  into 
and  through  each  other.  The  'must'  appears 
here  as  a  Machtspruch,  as  an  ipse  dixit  of  Mr. 
Bradley's  absolutistically  tempered  'under- 
standing,' for  he  candidly  confesses  that  how 
the  parts  do  differ  as  they  contribute  to  differ- 
ent wholes,  is  unknown  to  him.1 

Although  I  have  every  wish  to  comprehend 
the  authority  by  which  Mr.  Bradley's  under- 
standing speaks,  his  words  leave  me  wholly 
unconverted.  'External  relations'  stand  with 
their  withers  all  unwrung,  and  remain,  for 
aught  he  proves  to  the  contrary,  not  only 
practically  workable,  but  also  perfectly  intelli- 
gible factors  of  reality. 

is  a  rationally  respectable  hypothesis  also.  All  the  theses  of  radical 
empiricism,  in  short,  follow. 
1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  577-579. 


116 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

VI 

Mr.  Bradley's  understanding  shows  the 
most  extraordinary  power  of  perceiving  sepa- 
rations and  the  most  extraordinary  impotence 
in  comprehending  conjunctions.  One  would 
naturally  say  *  neither  or  both,'  but  not  so  Mr. 
Bradley.  When  a  common  man  analyzes  cer- 
tain whats  from  out  the  stream  of  experience,  he 
understands  their  distinctness  as  thus  isolated. 
But  this  does  not  prevent  him  from  equally 
well  understanding  their  combination  with 
each  other  as  originally  experienced  in  the  con- 
crete, or  their  confluence  with  new  sensible  ex- 
periences in  which  they  recur  as  'the  same.' 
Returning  into  the  stream  of  sensible  present- 
ation, nouns  and  adjectives,  and  thats  and  ab- 
stract whats,  grow  confluent  again,  and  the 
word  'is'  names  all  these  experiences  of  con- 
junction. Mr.  Bradley  understands  the  isola- 
tion of  the  abstracts,  but  to  understand  the 
combination  is  to  him  impossible.1  "To  under- 

1  So  far  as  I  catch  his  state  of  mind,  it  is  somewhat  like  this: '  Book," 
'table,'  'on'  —  how  does  the  existence  of  these  three  abstract  elements 
result  in  this  book  being  livingly  on  this  table.  Why  is  n't  the  table  on 

117 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

stand  a  complex  ABy"  he  says,  "I  must  begin 
with  A  or  B.  And  beginning,  say  with  A ,  if  I 
then  merely  find  B,  I  have  either  lost  A,  or 
I  have  got  beside  A,  [the  word  'beside'  seems 
here  vitaly  as  meaning  a  conjunction  'external' 
and  therefore  unintelligible]  something  else,  and 
in  neither  case  have  I  understood.1  For  my 
intellect  can  not  simply  unite  a  diversity,  nor 
has  it  in  itself  any  form  or  way  of  together- 
ness, and  you  gain  nothing  if,  beside  A  and  B, 
you  offer  me  their  conjunction  in  fact.  For  to 
my  intellect  that  is  no  more  than  another  ex- 
ternal element.  And  'facts,'  once  for  all,  are 
for  my  intellect  not  true  unless  they  satisfy 
it.  .  .  .  The  intellect  has  in  its  nature  no 
principle  of  mere  togetherness."  2 

the  book?  Or  why  does  n't  the  'on'  connect  itself  with  another  book, 
or  something  that  is  not  a  table?  Must  n't  something  in  each  of  the 
three  elements  already  determine  the  two  others  to  it,  so  that  they  do 
not  settle  elsewhere  or  float  vaguely?  Must  n't  the  uholefact  be  pre- 
figured in  each  part,  and  exist  dejure  before  it  can  exist  de  facto  ?  But, 
if  so,  in  what  can  the  jural  existence  consist,  if  not  in  a  spiritual 
miniature  of  the  whole  fact's  constitution  actuating  every  partial 
factor  as  its  purpose?  But  is  this  anything  but  the  old  metaphysical 
fallacy  of  looking  behind  a  fact  in  esse  for  the  ground  of  the  fact,  and 
finding  it  in  the  shape  of  the  very  same  fact  in  posse?  Somewhere  we 
must  leave  off  with  a  constitution  behind  which  there  is  nothing. 

1  Apply  this  to  the  case  of  '  book-on- table ' !  W.  J. 

2  Op.  cit.,  pp.  570,  572. 

118 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

Of  course  Mr.  Bradley  has  a  right  to  define 
'intellect'  as  the  power  by  which  we  perceive 
separations  but  not  unions  —  provided  he 
give  due  notice  to  the  reader.  But  why  then 
claim  that  such  a  maimed  and  amputated 
power  must  reign  supreme  in  philosophy,  and 
accuse  on  its  behoof  the  whole  empirical 
world  of  irrationality?  It  is  true  that  he  else- 
where attributes  to  the  intellect  a  proprius 
motus  of  transition,  but  says  that  when  he 
looks  for  these  transitions  in  the  detail  of  liv- 
ing experience,  he  'is  unable  to  verify  such  a 
solution.'  1 

Yet  he  never  explains  what  the  intellectual 
transitions  would  be  like  in  case  we  had  them. 
He  only  defines  them  negatively  —  they  are 
not  spatial,  temporal,  predicative,  or  causal; 
or  qualitatively  or  otherwise  serial;  or  in  any 
way  relational  as  we  naively  trace  relations, 
for  relations  separate  terms,  and  need  them- 
selves to  be  hooked  on  ad  infinitum.  The  near- 
est approach  he  makes  to  describing  a  truly 
intellectual  transition  is  where  he  speaks  of 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  568,  569. 

119 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

A  and  D  as  being  'united,  each  from  its  own 
nature,  in  a  whole  which  is  the  nature  of  both 
alike.'  l  But  this  (which,  pace  Mr.  Bradley, 
seems  exquisitely  analogous  to  'taking'  a  con- 
geries in  a  'lump,'  if  not  to  'swamping')  sug- 
gests nothing  but  that  conflux  which  pure 
experience  so  abundantly  offers,  as  when 
'space,'  'white'  and  'sweet'  are  confluent  in 
a  'lump  of  sugar,'  or  kinesthetic,  dermal,  and 
optical  sensations  confluent  in  'my  hand.'2 
All  that  I  can  verify  in  the  transitions  which 
Mr.  Bradley's  intellect  desiderates  as  its  pro- 
prius  motus  is  a  reminiscence  of  these  and 
other  sensible  conjunctions  (especially  space- 
conjunctions),  but  a  reminiscence  so  vague 
that  its  originals  are  not  recognized.  Bradley 
in  short  repeats  the  fable  of  the  dog,  the  bone, 
and  its  image  in  the  water.  With  a  world  of 
particulars,  given  in  loveliest  union,  in  con- 
junction definitely  various,  and  variously  de- 

1  Op.  ciL,  p.  570. 

2  How  meaningless  is  the  contention  that  in  such  wholes  (or  in 
'book-on-table,'  'watch-in-pocket,'  etc.)  the  relation  is  an  additional 
entity  between  the  terms,  needing  itself  to  be  related  again  to  each! 
Both  Bradley  (op.  cit.,  pp.  32-33)  and  Royce  (The  World  and  the 
Individual,  vol.  I,  p.  128)  lovingly  repeat  this  piece  of  profundity. 

120 


THE  THING  AND  ITS  RELATIONS 

finite,  the  'how'  of  which  you  'understand'  as 
soon  as  you  see  the  fact  of  them,1  for  there  is 
no  'how*  except  the  constitution  of  the  fact 
as  given;  with  all  this  given  him,  I  say,  in  pure 
experience,  he  asks  for  some  ineffable  union  in 
the  abstract  instead,  which,  if  he  gained  it, 
would  only  be  a  duplicate  of  what  he  has  al- 
ready in  his  full  possession.  Surely  he  abuses 
the  privilege  which  society  grants  to  all  us 
philosophers,  of  being  puzzle-headed. 

Polemic  writing  like  this  is  odious;  but  with 
absolutism  in  possession  in  so  many  quarters, 
omission  to  defend  my  radical  empiricism 
against  its  best  known  champion  would  count 
as  either  superficiality  or  inability.  I  have  to 
conclude  that  its  dialectic  has  not  invalidated 
in  the  least  degree  the  usual  conjunctions  by 
which  the  world,  as  experienced,  hangs  so  va- 
riously together.  In  particular  it  leaves  an  em- 
pirical theory  of  knowledge 2  intact,  and  lets 
us  continue  to  believe  with  common  sense  that 

1  The  'why'  and  the  'whence'  are  entirely  other  questions,  not 
under  discussion,  as  I  understand  Mr.  Bradley.  Not  how  experience 
gets  itself  born,  but  how  it  can  be  what  it  is  after  it  is  born,  is  the 
puzzle. 

a  Above,  p.  52. 

121 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

one  object  may  be  known,  if  we  have  any 
ground  for  thinking  that  it  is  known,  to  many 
knowers. 

In  [the  next  essay]  I  shall  return  to  this  last 
supposition,  which  seems  to  me  to  offer  other 
difficulties  much  harder  for  a  philosophy  of 
pure  experience  to  deal  with  than  any  of 
absolutism's  dialectic  objections. 


IV 

HOW  TWO  MINDS  CAN  KNOW 
ONE  THING1 

In  [the  essay]  entitled  'Does  Consciousness 
Exist? '  I  have  tried  to  show  that  when  we  call 
an  experience  'conscious,'  that  does  not  mean 
that  it  is  suffused  throughout  with  a  peculiar 
modality  of  being  ('psychic'  being)  as  stained 
glass  may  be  suffused  with  light,  but  rather 
that  it  stands  in  certain  determinate  relations 
to  other  portions  of  experience  extraneous  to 
itself.  These  form  one  peculiar  'context'  for 
it;  while,  taken  in  another  context  of  experi- 
ences, we  class  it  as  a  fact  in  the  physical 
world.  This  'pen,'  for  example,  is,  in  the  first 
instance,  a  bald  that,  a  datum,  fact,  phenom- 
enon, content,  or  whatever  other  neutral  or 
ambiguous  name  you  may  prefer  to  apply.  I 
called  it  in  that  article  a  'pure  experience.'  To 
get  classed  either  as  a  physical  pen  or  as  some 
one's  percept  of  a  pen,  it  must  assume  a  func- 

1  [Reprinted  from  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  n,  No.  7,  March  30,  1905.] 

123 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

tion,  and  that  can  only  happen  in  a  more  com- 
plicated world.  So  far  as  in  that  world  it  is 
a  stable  feature,  holds  ink,  marks  paper  and 
obeys  the  guidance  of  a  hand,  it  is  a  physical 
pen.  That  is  what  we  mean  by  being  *  physi- 
cal/ in  a  pen.  So  far  as  it  is  instable,  on  the 
contrary,  coming  and  going  with  the  move- 
ments of  my  eyes,  altering  with  what  I  call  my 
fancy,  continuous  with  subsequent  experiences 
of  its  *  having  been'  (in  the  past  tense),  it  is  the 
percept  of  a  pen  in  my  mind.  Those  peculiar- 
ities are  what  we  mean  by  being  'conscious,' 
in  a  pen. 

In  Section  VI  of  another  [essay]1  I  tried  to 
show  that  the  same  that,  the  same  numerically 
identical  pen  of  pure  experience,  can  enter 
simultaneously  into  many  conscious  contexts, 
or,  in  other  words,  be  an  object  for  many  differ- 
ent minds.  I  admitted  that  I  had  not  space 
to  treat  of  certain  possible  objections  in  that 
article;  but  in  [the  last  essay]  I  took  some  of 
the  objections  up.  At  the  end  of  that  [essay] 
I   said   that   still   more   formidable-sounding 

1  "A  World  of  Pure  Experience,"  above,  pp.  39-91. 
124 


TWO  MINDS  CAN  KNOW  ONE  THING 

objections  remained;  so,  to  leave  my  pure- 
experience  theory  in  as  strong  a  state  as  pos- 
sible, I  propose  to  consider  those  objections  now. 

I 

The  objections  I  previously  tried  to  dispose 
of  were  purely  logical  or  dialectical.  No  one 
identical  term,  whether  physical  or  psychical, 
it  had  been  said,  could  be  the  subject  of  two 
relations  at  once.  This  thesis  I  sought  to  prove 
unfounded.  The  objections  that  now  confront 
us  arise  from  the  nature  supposed  to  inhere  in 
psychic  facts  specifically.  Whatever  may  be 
the  case  with  physical  objects,  a  fact  of  con- 
sciousness, it  is  alleged  (and  indeed  very  plau- 
sibly), can  not,  without  self-contradiction,  be 
treated  as  a  portion  of  two  different  minds, 
and  for  the  following  reasons. 

In  the  physical  world  we  make  with  impu- 
nity the  assumption  that  one  and  the  same 
material  object  can  figure  in  an  indefinitely 
large  number  of  different  processes  at  once. 
When,  for  instance,  a  sheet  of  rubber  is  pulled 
at  its  four  corners,  a  unit  of  rubber  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  sheet  is  affected  by  all  four  of  the 

125 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

pulls.  It  transmits  them  each,  as  if  it  pulled  in 
four  different  ways  at  once  itself.  So,  an  air- 
particle  or  an  ether-particle  'compounds'  the 
different  directions  of  movement  imprinted  on 
it  without  obliterating  their  several  individuali- 
ties. It  delivers  them  distinct,  on  the  contrary, 
at  as  many  several  'receivers'  (ear,  eye  or  what 
not)  as  may  be  '  tuned '  to  that  effect.  The  ap- 
parent paradox  of  a  distinctness  like  this  sur- 
viving in  the  midst  of  compounding  is  a  thing 
which,  I  fancy,  the  analyses  made  by  physi- 
cists have  by  this  time  sufficiently  cleared  up. 

But  if,  on  the  strength  of  these  analogies,  one 
should  ask :  "  Why,  if  two  or  more  lines  can  run 
through  one  and  the  same  geometrical  point, 
or  if  two  or  more  distinct  processes  of  activ- 
ity can  run  through  one  and  the  same  physi- 
cal thing  so  that  it  simultaneously  plays  a  role 
in  each  and  every  process,  might  not  two  or 
more  streams  of  personal  consciousness  include 
one  and  the  same  unit  of  experience  so  that  it 
would  simultaneously  be  a  part  of  the  experi- 
ence of  all  the  different  minds?"  one  would  be 
checked  by  thinking  of  a  certain  peculiarity  by 

126 


TWO  MINDS  CAN  KNOW  ONE  THING 

which  phenomena  of  consciousness  differ  from 
physical  things. 

While  physical  things,  namely,  are  supposed 
to  be  permanent  and  to  have  their  'states,'  a 
fact  of  consciousness  exists  but  once  and  is  a 
state.  Its  esse  is  sentiri;  it  is  only  so  far  as  it  is 
felt;  and  it  is  unambiguously  and  unequivo- 
cally exactly  what  is  felt.  The  hypothesis  under 
consideration  would,  however,  oblige  it  to  be 
felt  equivocally,  felt  now  as  part  of  my  mind 
and  again  at  the  same  time  not  as  a  part  of  my 
mind,  but  of  yours  (for  my  mind  is  not  yours), 
and  this  would  seem  impossible  without  doub- 
ling it  into  two  distinct  things,  or,  in  other 
words,  without  reverting  to  the  ordinary  dual- 
istic  philosophy  of  insulated  minds  each  know- 
ing its  object  representatively  as  a  third  thing, 
—  and  that  would  be  to  give  up  the  pure- 
experience  scheme  altogether. 

Can  we  see,  then,  any  way  in  which  a  unit  of 
pure  experience  might  enter  into  and  figure  in 
two  diverse  streams  of  consciousness  without 
turning  itself  into  the  two  units  which,  on  our 
hypothesis,  it  must  not  be  ? 

127 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

II 

There  is  a  way;  and  the  first  step  towards  it 
is  to  see  more  precisely  how  the  unit  enters  into 
either  one  of  the  streams  of  consciousness 
alone.  Just  what,  from  being  'pure,'  does  its 
becoming  'conscious'  once  mean? 

It  means,  first,  that  new  experiences  have 
supervened ;  and,  second,  that  they  have 
borne  a  certain  assignable  relation  to  the  unit 
supposed.  Continue,  if  you  please,  to  speak  of 
the  pure  unit  as  'the  pen.'  So  far  as  the  pen's 
successors  do  but  repeat  the  pen  or,  being 
different  from  it,  are  'energetically'1  related 
to  it,  it  and  they  will  form  a  group  of  stably 
existing  physical  things.  So  far,  however,  as 
its  successors  differ  from  it  in  another  well- 
determined  way,  the  pen  will  figure  in  their 
context,  not  as  a  physical,  but  as  a  mental  fact. 
It  will  become  a  passing  'percept,'  my  percept 
of  that  pen.  What  now  is  that  decisive  well- 
determined  way? 

In  the  chapter  on  'The  Self,'  in  my  Principles 

1  [For  an  explanation  of  this  expression,  see  above,  p.  32.] 
128 


TWO  MINDS  CAN  KNOW  ONE  THING 

of  Psychology ,  I  explained  the  continuous  iden- 
tity of  each  personal  consciousness  as  a  name 
for  the  practical  fact  that  new  experiences  1 
come  which  look  back  on  the  old  ones,  find 
them  'warm/  and  greet  and  appropriate  them 
as  'mine.'  These  operations  mean,  when  ana- 
lyzed empirically,  several  tolerably  definite 
things,  viz. : 

1.  That  the  new  experience  has  past  time  for 
its  *  content,'  and  in  that  time  a  pen  that '  was ' ; 

2.  That  'warmth'  was  also  about  the  pen, 
in  the  sense  of  a  group  of  feelings  ('interest' 
aroused,  'attention'  turned,  'eyes'  employed, 
etc.)  that  were  closely  connected  with  it  and 
that  now  recur  and  evermore  recur  with  un- 
broken vividness,  though  from  the  pen  of  now, 
which  may  be  only  an  image,  all  such  vividness 
may  have  gone; 

3.  That  these  feelings  are  the  nucleus  of '  me ' ; 

4.  That  whatever  once  was  associated  with 
them  was,  at  least  for  that  one  moment, 
'mine'  —  my  implement  if  associated   with 

1  I  call  them  'passing  thoughts '  in  the  book  —  the  passage  in  point 
goes  from  pages  330  to  342  of  vol.  I. 

129 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

hand-feelings,  my  *  percept'  only,  if  only  eye- 
feelings  and  attention-feelings  were  involved. 

The  pen,  realized  in  this  retrospective  way 
as  my  percept,  thus  figures  as  a  fact  of  'con- 
scious' life.  But  it  does  so  only  so  far  as  'ap- 
propriation' has  occurred;  and  appropriation 
is  part  of  the  content  of  a  later  experience  wholly 
additional  to  the  originally  'pure'  pen.  That 
pen,  virtually  both  objective  and  subjective,  is 
at  its  own  moment  actually  and  intrinsically 
neither.  It  has  to  be  looked  back  upon  and 
used,  in  order  to  be  classed  in  either  distinctive 
way.  But  its  use,  so  called,  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  other  experience,  while  it  stands,  through- 
out the  operation,  passive  and  unchanged. 

If  this  pass  muster  as  an  intelligible  account 
of  how  an  experience  originally  pure  can  enter 
into  one  consciousness,  the  next  question  is  as 
to  how  it  might  conceivably  enter  into  two. 

Ill 

Obviously  no  new  kind  of  condition  would 

have  to  be  supplied.  All  that  we  should  have 

to  postulate  would  be  a  second  subsequent 

130 


TWO  MINDS  CAN  KNOW  ONE  THING 

experience,  collateral  and  contemporary  with 
the  first  subsequent  one,  in  which  a  similar  act 
of  appropriation  should  occur.  The  two  acts 
would  interfere  neither  with  one  another  nor 
with  the  originally  pure  pen.  It  would  sleep 
undisturbed  in  its  own  past,  no  matter  how 
many  such  successors  went  through  their  sev- 
eral appropriative  acts.  Each  would  know  it 
as  'my '  percept,  each  would  class  it  as  a  'con- 
scious* fact. 

Nor  need  their  so  classing  it  interfere  in  the 
least  with  their  classing  it  at  the  same  time  as 
a  physical  pen.  Since  the  classing  in  both  cases 
depends  upon  the  taking  of  it  in  one  group  or 
another  of  associates,  if  the  superseding  experi- 
ence were  of  wide  enough  'span'  it  could  think 
the  pen  in  both  groups  simultaneously,  and  yet 
distinguish  the  two  groups.  It  would  then  see 
the  whole  situation  conformably  to  what  we 
call  'the  representative  theory  of  cognition,' 
and  that  is  what  we  all  spontaneously  do.  As  a 
man  philosophizing  'popularly,'  I  believe  that 
what  I  see  myself  writing  with  is  double  —  I 
think  it  in  its  relations  to  physical  nature,  and 

131 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

also  in  its  relations  to  my  personal  life;  I  see 
that  it  is  in  my  mind,  but  that  it  also  is  a 
physical  pen. 

The  paradox  of  the  same  experience  figuring 
in  two  consciousnesses  seems  thus  no  paradox 
at  all.  To  be  'conscious'  means  not  simply  to 
be,  but  to  be  reported,  known,  to  have  aware- 
ness of  one's  being  added  to  that  being;  and 
this  is  just  what  happens  when  the  appropri- 
ative  experience  supervenes.  The  pen-experi- 
ence in  its  original  immediacy  is  not  aware  of 
itself,  it  simply  is,  and  the  second  experience  is 
required  for  what  we  call  awareness  of  it  to 
occur.1  The  difficulty  of  understanding  what 
happens  here  is,  therefore,  not  a  logical  diffi- 
culty: there  is  no  contradiction  involved.  It  is 
an  ontological  difficulty  rather.  Experiences 
come  on  an  enormous  scale,  and  if  we  take 

1  Shadworth  Hodgson  has  laid  great  stress  on  the  fact  that  the 
minimum  of  consciousness  demands  two  subfeelings,  of  which  the 
second  retrospects  the  first.  (Cf .  the  section  '  Analysis  of  Minima '  in 
his  Philosophy  of  Reflection,  vol.  I,  p.  248;  also  the  chapter  entitled 
'The  Moment  of  Experience'  in  his  Metaphysic  of  Experience,  vol.  i, 
p.  34.)  'We  live  forward,  but  we  understand  backward'  is  a  phrase  of 
Kierkegaard's  which  Hoffding  quotes.  [  H.  Hoffding:  "A  Philosophi- 
cal Confession,"  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific 
Methods,  vol.  n,  1905,  p.  86.] 

132 


TWO  MINDS  CAN  KNOW  ONE  THING 

them  all  together,  they  come  in  a  chaos  of 
incommensurable  relations  that  we  can  not 
straighten  out.  We  have  to  abstract  different 
groups  of  them,  and  handle  these  separately 
if  we  are  to  talk  of  them  at  all.  But  how  the 
experiences  ever  get  themselves  made,  or  why 
their  characters  and  relations  are  just  such 
as  appear,  we  can  not  begin  to  understand. 
Granting,  however,  that,  by  hook  or  crook, 
they  can  get  themselves  made,  and  can  appear 
in  the  successions  that  I  have  so  schematically 
described,  then  we  have  to  confess  that  even 
although  (as  I  began  by  quoting  from  the  ad- 
versary) 'a  feeling  only  is  as  it  is  felt,'  there  is 
still  nothing  absurd  in  the  notion  of  its  being 
felt  in  two  different  ways  at  once,  as  yours, 
namely,  and  as  mine.  It  is,  indeed,  'mine '  only 
as  it  is  felt  as  mine,  and  'yours'  only  as  it  is 
felt  as  yours.  But  it  is  felt  as  neither  by  itself, 
but  only  when  'owned*  by  our  two  several  re- 
membering experiences,  just  as  one  undivided 
estate  is  owned  by  several  heirs. 


133 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

IV 

One  word,  now,  before  I  close,  about  the 
corollaries  of  the  views  set  forth.  Since  the 
acquisition  of  conscious  quality  on  the  part  of 
an  experience  depends  upon  a  context  coming 
to  it,  it  follows  that  the  sum  total  of  all  experi- 
ences, having  no  context,  can  not  strictly  be 
called  conscious  at  all.  It  is  a  that,  an  Ab- 
solute, a  'pure'  experience  on  an  enormous 
scale,  undifferentiated  and  undifferentiate 
into  thought  and  thing.  This  the  post-Kant- 
ian idealists  have  always  practically  acknow- 
ledged by  calling  their  doctrine  an  Identitats- 
philosophie.  The  question  of  the  Beseelung  of 
the  All  of  things  ought  not,  then,  even  to  be 
asked.  No  more  ought  the  question  of  its  truth 
to  be  asked,  for  truth  is  a  relation  inside  of  the 
sum  total,  obtaining  between  thoughts  and 
something  else,  and  thoughts,  as  we  have  seen, 
can  only  be  contextual  things.  In  these  re- 
spects the  pure  experiences  of  our  philosophy 
are,  in  themselves  considered,  so  many  little 
absolutes,  the  philosophy  of  pure  experience 

134 


TWO  MINDS  CAN  KNOW  ONE  THING 

being  only  a  more  comminuted  Identitcitsphi- 
losophie.1 

Meanwhile,  a  pure  experience  can  be  postu- 
lated with  any  amount  whatever  of  span  or 
field.  If  it  exert  the  retrospective  and  appro- 
priative  function  on  any  other  piece  of  experi- 
ence, the  latter  thereby  enters  into  its  own 
conscious  stream.  And  in  this  operation  time 
intervals  make  no  essential  difference.  After 
sleeping,  my  retrospection  is  as  perfect  as  it  is 
between  two  successive  waking  moments  of  my 
time.  Accordingly  if,  millions  of  years  later,  a 
similarly  retrospective  experience  should  any- 
how come  to  birth,  my  present  thought  would 
form  a  genuine  portion  of  its  long-span  con- 
scious life.  'Form  a  portion,'  I  say,  but  not  in 
the  sense  that  the  two  things  could  be  enti- 
tatively  or  substantively  one  —  they  cannot, 
for  they  are  numerically  discrete  facts  — but 
only  in  the  sense  that  the  functions  of  my  pre- 
sent thought,  its  knowledge,  its  purpose,  its 
content  and  'consciousness,'  in  short,  being 
inherited,    would    be    continued    practically 

1  [Cf.  below,  pp.  197,  202.] 
135 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

unchanged.  Speculations  like  Fechner's,  of  an 
Earth-soul,  of  wider  spans  of  consciousness 
enveloping  narrower  ones  throughout  the  cos- 
mos, are,  therefore,  philosophically  quite  in 
order,  provided  they  distinguish  the  functional 
from  the  entitative  point  of  view,  and  do  not 
treat  the  minor  consciousness  under  discussion 
as  a  kind  of  standing  material  of  which  the 
wider  ones  consist.1 

1  [Cf.  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  Lect.  iv,  'Concerning  Fechner,'  and 
Lect.  v,  'The  Compounding  of  Consciousness.'] 


THE    PLACE    OF    AFFECTIONAL 

FACTS  IN  A  WORLD  OF  PURE 

EXPERIENCE1 

Common  sense  and  popular  philosophy  are  as 
dualistic  as  it  is  possible  to  be.  Thoughts,  we 
all  naturally  think,  are  made  of  one  kind  of 
substance,  and  things  of  another.  Conscious- 
ness, flowing  inside  of  us  in  the  forms  of  con- 
ception or  judgment,  or  concentrating  itself  in 
the  shape  of  passion  or  emotion,  can  be  directly 
felt  as  the  spiritual  activity  which  it  is,  and 
known  in  contrast  with  the  space-filling  ob- 
jective *  content*  which  it  envelopes  and  ac- 
companies. In  opposition  to  this  dualistic 
philosophy,  I  tried,  in  [the  first  essay]  to  show 
that  thoughts  and  things  are  absolutely  homo- 
geneous as  to  their  material,  and  that  their 
opposition  is  only  one  of  relation  and  of  func- 
tion. There  is  no  thought-stuff  different  from 
thing-stuff,  I  said;  but  the  same  identical  piece 

1  [Reprinted   from   The  Journal  of  Philosophy,    Psychology   and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  u,  No.  11,  May  25,  1905.] 

137 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

of  'pure  experience'  (which  was  the  name  1 
gave  to  the  materia  prima  of  everything)  can 
stand  alternately  for  a  'fact  of  consciousness' 
or  for  a  physical  reality,  according  as  it  is  taken 
in  one  context  or  in  another.  For  the  right 
understanding  of  what  follows,  I  shall  have  to 
presuppose  that  the  reader  will  have  read  that 
[essay].1 

The  commonest  objection  which  the  doc- 
trine there  laid  down  runs  up  against  is  drawn 
from  the  existence  of  our  'affections.'  In  our 
pleasures  and  pains,  our  loves  and  fears  and 
angers,  in  the  beauty,  comicality,  importance 
or  preciousness  of  certain  objects  and  situa- 
tions, we  have,  I  am  told  by  many  critics,  a 
great  realm  of  experience  intuitively  recog- 
nized as  spiritual,  made,  and  felt  to  be  made, 
of  consciousness  exclusively,  and  different  in 
nature  from  the  space-filling  kind  of  being 
which  is  enjoyed  by  physical  objects.  In 
Section  VII.  of  [the  first  essay],  I  treated  of 
this  class  of  experiences  very  inadequately, 

1  It  will  be  still  better  if  he  shall  have  also  read  the  [essay]  entitled 
'A  World  of  Pure  Experience,'  which  follows  [the  first]  and  develops 
its  ideas  still  farther. 

138 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

because  I  had  to  be  so  brief.  I  now  return  to 
the  subject,  because  I  believe  that,  so  far  from 
invalidating  my  general  thesis,  these  phenom- 
ena, when  properly  analyzed,  afford  it  powerful 
support. 

The  central  point  of  the  pure-experience  the- 
ory is  that  'outer'  and  'inner'  are  names  for 
two  groups  into  which  we  sort  experiences 
according  to  the  way  in  which  they  act  upon 
their  neighbors.  Any  one  'content,'  such  as 
hardt  let  us  say,  can  be  assigned  to  either 
group.  In  the  outer  group  it  is  'strong,'  it  acts 
'energetically'  and  aggressively.  Here  what- 
ever is  hard  interferes  with  the  space  its  neigh- 
bors occupy.  It  dents  them;  is  impenetrable 
by  them;  and  we  call  the  hardness  then  a  phy- 
sical hardness.  In  the  mind,  on  the  contrary, 
the  hard  thing  is  nowhere  in  particular,  it 
dents  nothing,  it  suffuses  through  its  mental 
neighbors,  as  it  were,  and  interpenetrates 
them.  Taken  in  this  group  we  call  both  it  and 
them  'ideas'  or  'sensations';  and  the  basis  of 
the  two  groups  respectively  is  the  different 
type  of  interrelation,  the  mutual  impenetrabil- 

139 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ity,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  lack  of  physical 
interference  and  interaction,  on  the  other. 

That  what  in  itself  is  one  and  the  same 
entity  should  be  able  to  function  thus  differ- 
ently in  different  contexts  is  a  natural  conse- 
quence of  the  extremely  complex  reticulations 
in  which  our  experiences  come.  To  her  off- 
spring a  tigress  is  tender,  but  cruel  to  every 
other  living  thing  —  both  cruel  and  tender, 
therefore,  at  once.  A  mass  in  movement  resists 
every  force  that  operates  contrariwise  to  its 
own  direction,  but  to  forces  that  pursue  the 
same  direction,  or  come  in  at  right  angles,  it  is 
absolutely  inert.  It  is  thus  both  energetic  and 
inert;  and  the  same  is  true  (if  you  vary  the 
associates  properly)  of  every  other  piece  of 
experience.  It  is  only  towards  certain  specific 
groups  of  associates  that  the  physical  energies, 
as  we  call  them,  of  a  content  are  put  forth.  In 
another  group  it  may  be  quite  inert. 

It  is  possible  to  imagine  a  universe  of  expe- 
riences in  which  the  only  alternative  between 
neighbors  would  be  either  physical  interaction 
or^  complete  inertness.    In  such  a  world  the 

140 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

mental  or  the  physical  status  of  any  piece  of 
experience  would  be  unequivocal.  When  act- 
ive, it  would  figure  in  the  physical,  and  when 
inactive,  in  the  mental  group. 

But  the  universe  we  live  in  is  more  chaotic 
than  this,  and  there  is  room  in  it  for  the  hybrid 
or  ambiguous  group  of  our  affectional  experi- 
ences, of  our  emotions  and  appreciative  per- 
ceptions. In  the  paragraphs  that  follow  I  shall 
try  to  show : 

(1)  That  the  popular  notion  that  these  ex- 
periences are  intuitively  given  as  purely  inner 
facts  is  hasty  and  erroneous;  and 

(2)  That  their  ambiguity  illustrates  beauti- 
fully my  central  thesis  that  subjectivity  and 
objectivity  are  affairs  not  of  what  an  experi- 
ence is  aboriginally  made  of,  but  of  its  classi- 
fication. Classifications  depend  on  our  tem- 
porary purposes.  For  certain  purposes  it  is 
convenient  to  take  things  in  one  set  of  rela- 
tions, for  other  purposes  in  another  set.  In  the 
two  cases  their  contexts  are  apt  to  be  different. 
In  the  case  of  our  affectional  experiences  we 
have  no  permanent  and  steadfast  purpose  that 

141 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

obliges  us  to  be  consistent,  so  we  find  it  easy  to 
let  them  float  ambiguously,  sometimes  class- 
ing them  with  our  feelings,  sometimes  with 
more  physical  realities,  according  to  caprice 
or  to  the  convenience  of  the  moment.  Thus 
would  these  experiences,  so  far  from  being 
an  obstacle  to  the  pure  experience  philoso- 
phy, serve  as  an  excellent  corroboration  of  its 
truth. 

First  of  all,  then,  it  is  a  mistake  to  say,  with 
the  objectors  whom  I  began  by  citing,  that 
anger,  love  and  fear  are  affections  purely  of  the 
mind.  That,  to  a  great  extent  at  any  rate,  they 
are  simultaneously  affections  of  the  body  is 
proved  by  the  whole  literature  of  the  James- 
Lange  theory  of  emotion.1  All  our  pains, 
moreover,  are  local,  and  we  are  always  free  to 
speak  of  them  in  objective  as  well  as  in  sub- 
jective terms.  We  can  say  that  we  are  aware  of 
a  painful  place,  filling  a  certain  bigness  in  our 
organism,  or  we  can  say  that  we  are  inwardly 
in  a  'state'  of  pain.    All  our  adjectives  of 

1  [Cf.  The  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  II,  ch.  xxv;  and  "The 
Physical  Basis  of  Emotion,"  The  Psychological  Review,  vol.  I,  1894, 
p.  516.] 

142 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

worth  are  similarly  ambiguous  —  I  instanced 
some  of  the  ambiguities  [in  the  first  essay].1 
Is  the  preciousness  of  a  diamond  a  quality  of 
the  gem?  or  is  it  a  feeling  in  our  mind?  Practi- 
cally we  treat  it  as  both  or  as  either,  accord- 
ing to  the  temporary  direction  of  our  thought. 
'Beauty,'  says  Professor  Santayana,  'is  pleas- 
ure objectified';  and  in  Sections  10  and  11  of 
his  work,  The  Sense  of  Beauty,  he  treats  in  a 
masterly  way  of  this  equivocal  realm.  The 
various  pleasures  we  receive  from  an  object 
may  count  as  'feelings'  when  we  take  them 
singly,  but  when  they  combine  in  a  total  rich- 
ness, we  call  the  result  the  'beauty'  of  the 
object,  and  treat  it  as  an  outer  attribute  which 
our  mind  perceives.  We  discover  beauty  just  as 
we  discover  the  physical  properties  of  things. 
Training  is  needed  to  make  us  expert  in  either 
line.  Single  sensations  also  may  be  ambiguous. 
Shall  we  say  an  'agreeable  degree  of  heat,'  or 
an  'agreeable  feeling'  occasioned  by  the  degree 
of  heat?  Either  will  do;  and  language  would 
lose  most  of  its  esthetic  and  rhetorical  value 

1  [See  above,  pp.  34,  35.] 
143 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

were  we  forbidden  to  project  words  primarily 
connoting  our  affections  upon  the  objects  by 
which  the  affections  are  aroused.  The  man 
is  really  hateful;  the  action  really  mean;  the 
situation  really  tragic  —  all  in  themselves  and 
quite  apart  from  our  opinion.  We  even  go  so 
far  as  to  talk  of  a  weary  road,  a  giddy  height,  a 
jocund  morning  or  a  sullen  sky;  and  the  term 
'indefinite'  while  usually  applied  only  to  our 
apprehensions,  functions  as  a  fundamental 
physical  qualification  of  things  in  Spencer's 
'law  of  evolution,'  and  doubtless  passes  with 
most  readers  for  all  right. 

Psychologists,  studying  our  perceptions  of 
movement,  have  unearthed  experiences  in 
which  movement  is  felt  in  general  but  not 
ascribed  correctly  to  the  body  that  really 
moves.  Thus  in  optical  vertigo,  caused  by 
unconscious  movements  of  our  eyes,  both  we 
and  the  external  universe  appear  to  be  in  a 
whirl.  When  clouds  float  by  the  moon,  it  is  as 
if  both  clouds  and  moon  and  we  ourselves 
shared  in  the  motion.  In  the  extraordinary 
case  of  amnesia  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hanna,  pub- 

144 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

lished  by  Sidis  and  Goodhart  in  their  import- 
ant work  on  Multiple  Personality,  we  read  that 
when  the  patient  first  recovered  consciousness 
and  "noticed  an  attendant  walk  across  the 
room,  he  identified  the  movement  with  that  of 
his  own.  He  did  not  yet  discriminate  between 
his  own  movements  and  those  outside  him- 
self." 1  Such  experiences  point  to  a  primitive 
stage  of  perception  in  which  discriminations 
afterwards  needful  have  not  yet  been  made. 
A  piece  of  experience  of  a  determinate  sort 
is  there,  but  there  at  first  as  a  'pure'  fact. 
Motion  originally  simply  is;  only  later  is  it 
confined  to  this  thing  or  to  that.  Something 
like  this  is  true  of  every  experience,  however 
complex,  at  the  moment  of  its  actual  presence. 
Let  the  reader  arrest  himself  in  the  act  of  read- 
ing this  article  now.  Now  this  is  a  pure  experi- 
ence, a  phenomenon,  or  datum,  a  mere  that  or 
content  of  fact.  'Reading'  simply  is,  is  there; 
and  whether  there  for  some  one's  conscious- 
ness, or  there  for  physical  nature,  is  a  question 
not  yet  put.   At  the  moment,  it  is  there  for 

•  Page  102. 
145 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

neither;  later  we  shall  probably  judge  it  to 
have  been  there  for  both. 

With  the  affectional  experiences  which  we 
are  considering,  the  relatively  'pure'  condi- 
tion lasts.  In  practical  life  no  urgent  need  has 
yet  arisen  for  deciding  whether  to  treat  them 
as  rigorously  mental  or  as  rigorously  physical 
facts.  So  they  remain  equivocal;  and,  as  the 
world  goes,  their  equivocality  is  one  of  their 
great  conveniences. 

The  shifting  place  of  '  secondary  qualities'  in 
the  history  of  philosophy l  is  another  excellent 
proof  of  the  fact  that  'inner'  and  'outer'  are 
not  coefficients  with  which  experiences  come  to 
us  aboriginally  stamped,  but  are  rather  results 
of  a  later  classification  performed  by  us  for 
particular  needs.  The  common-sense  stage  of 
thought  is  a  perfectly  definite  practical  halt- 
ing-place, the  place  where  we  ourselves  can 
proceed  to  act  unhesitatingly.  On  this  stage 
of  thought  things  act  on  each  other  as  well 
as  on  us  by  means  of  their  secondary  quali- 

1  [Cf.  Janet  and  Seailles:  History  of  the  Problems  of  Philosophy, 
trans,  by  Monahan,  part  i,  ch.  ni.] 

146 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

ties.  Sound,  as  such,  goes  through  the  air 
and  can  be  intercepted.  The  heat  of  the  fire 
passes  over,  as  such,  into  the  water  which  it 
sets  a-boiling.  It  is  the  very  light  of  the  arc- 
lamp  which  displaces  the  darkness  of  the  mid- 
night street,  etc.  By  engendering  and  trans- 
locating just  these  qualities,  actively  efficacious 
as  they  seem  to  be,  we  ourselves  succeed  in 
altering  nature  so  as  to  suit  us;  and  until  more 
purely  intellectual,  as  distinguished  from  prac- 
tical, needs  had  arisen,  no  one  ever  thought 
of  calling  these  qualities  subjective.  When, 
however,  Galileo,  Descartes,  and  others  found 
it  best  for  philosophic  purposes  to  class  sound, 
heat,  and  light  along  with  pain  and  pleasure 
as  purely  mental  phenomena,  they  could  do  so 
with  impunity.1 

Even  the  primary  qualities  are  undergoing 
the  same  fate.  Hardness  and  softness  are  ef- 
fects on  us  of  atomic  interactions,  and  the 
atoms  themselves  are  neither  hard  nor  soft, 
nor  solid  nor  liquid.  Size  and  shape  are  deemed 

1  [Cf.  Descartes:  Meditation  n ;  Principles  of  Philosophy,  part  I, 
xlvhi.] 

147 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

subjective  by  Kantians;  time  itself  is  sub- 
jective according  to  many  philosophers ; !  and 
even  the  activity  and  causal  efficacy  which 
lingered  in  physics  long  after  secondary  quali- 
ties were  banished  are  now  treated  as  illusory 
projections  outwards  of  phenomena  of  our 
own  consciousness.  There  are  no  activities  or 
effects  in  nature,  for  the  most  intellectual 
contemporary  school  of  physical  speculation. 
Nature  exhibits  only  changes,  which  habitually 
coincide  with  one  another  so  that  their  habits 
are  describable  in  simple  'laws.'  2 

There  is  no  original  spirituality  or  material- 
ity of  being,  intuitively  discerned,  then ;  but 
only  a  translocation  of  experiences  from  one 
wTorld  to  another  ;  a  grouping  of  them  with 
one  set  or  another  of  associates  for  definitely 
practical  or  intellectual  ends. 

I  will  say  nothing  here  of  the  persistent 
ambiguity  of  relations.  They  are  undeniable 
parts  of  pure  experience;  yet,  while  common 
sense  and  what  I  call  radical  empiricism  stand 

1  [Cf.  A.  E.  Taylor:  Elements  of  Metaphysics,  bk.  m,  ch.  iv.] 

2  [Cf.  K.  Pearson:  Grammar  of  Science,  ch.  ui-l 

148 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

for  their  being  objective,  both  rationalism  and 
the  usual  empiricism  claim  that  they  are  ex- 
clusively the  'work  of  the  mind'  —  the  finite 
mind  or  the  absolute  mind,  as  the  case  may  be. 

Turn  now  to  those  affective  phenomena 
which  more  directly  concern  us. 

We  soon  learn  to  separate  the  ways  in  which 
things  appeal  to  our  interests  and  emotions 
from  the  ways  in  which  they  act  upon  one 
another.  It  does  not  work  to  assume  that  phy- 
sical objects  are  going  to  act  outwardly  by 
their  sympathetic  or  antipathetic  qualities. 
The  beauty  of  a  thing  or  its  value  is  no  force 
that  can  be  plotted  in  a  polygon  of  composi- 
tions, nor  does  its '  use '  or  *  significance '  affect  in 
the  minutest  degree  its  vicissitudes  or  destiny 
at  the  hands  of  physical  nature.  Chemical 
'afrmi ties'  are  a  purely  verbal  metaphor;  and, 
as  I  just  said,  even  such  things  as  forces,  ten- 
sions, and  activities  can  at  a  pinch  be  regarded 
as  anthropomorphic  projections.  So  far,  then, 
as  the  physical  world  means  the  collection  of 
contents  that  determine  in  each  other  certain 

149 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

regular  changes,  the  whole  collection  of  our 
appreciative  attributes  has  to  be  treated  as 
falling  outside  of  it.  If  we  mean  by  physical 
nature  whatever  lies  beyond  the  surface  of  our 
bodies,  these  attributes  are  inert  throughout 
the  whole  extent  of  physical  nature. 

Why  then  do  men  leave  them  as  ambiguous 
as  they  do,  and  not  class  them  decisively  as 
purely  spiritual? 

The  reason  would  seem  to  be  that,  although 
they  are  inert  as  regards  the  rest  of  physical 
nature,  they  are  not  inert  as  regards  that  part 
of  physical  nature  which  our  own  skin  covers. 
It  is  those  very  appreciative  attributes  of 
things,  their  dangerousness,  beauty,  rarity, 
utility,  etc.,  that  primarily  appeal  to  our 
attention.  In  our  commerce  with  nature  these 
attributes  are  what  give  emphasis  to  objects; 
and  for  an  object  to  be  emphatic,  whatever 
spiritual  fact  it  may  mean,  means  also  that  it 
produces  immediate  bodily  effects  upon  us, 
alterations  of  tone  and  tension,  of  heart-beat 
and  breathing,  of  vascular  and  visceral  action. 

The  'interesting'  aspects  of  things  are  thus 

150 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

not  wholly  inert  physically,  though  they  be 
active  only  in  these  small  corners  of  physi- 
cal nature  which  our  bodies  occupy.  That, 
however,  is  enough  to  save  them  from  being 
classed  as  absolutely  non-objective. 

The  attempt,  if  any  one  should  make  it,  to 
sort  experiences  into  two  absolutely  discrete 
groups,  with  nothing  but  inertness  in  one  of 
them  and  nothing  but  activities  in  the  other, 
would  thus  receive  one  check.  It  would  receive 
another  as  soon  as  we  examined  the  more 
distinctively  mental  group ;  for  though  in  that 
group  it  be  true  that  things  do  not  act  on  one 
another  by  their  physical  properties,  do  not 
dent  each  other  or  set  fire  to  each  other,  they 
yet  act  on  each  other  in  the  most  energetic 
way  by  those  very  characters  which  are  so 
inert  extracorporeally.  It  is  by  the  interest 
and  importance  that  experiences  have  for  us, 
by  the  emotions  they  excite,  and  the  purposes 
they  subserve,  by  their  affective  values,  in 
short,  that  their  consecution  in  our  several 
conscious  streams,  as  'thoughts'  of  ours,  is 

mainly  ruled.  Desire  introduces  them;  interest 

151 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

holds  them;  fitness  fixes  their  order  and  con- 
nection. I  need  only  refer  for  this  aspect  of 
our  mental  life,  to  Wundt's  article  'Ueber 
psychische  Causalitat,'  which  begins  Volume 
X.  of  his  Philosophische  Studien.1 

It  thus  appears  that  the  ambiguous  or  am- 
phibious status  which  we  find  our  epithets  of 
value  occupying  is  the  most  natural  thing  in 
the  world.  It  would,  however,  be  an  unnatural 
status  if  the  popular  opinion  which  I  cited 
at  the  outset  were  correct.  If  'physical'  and 
'mental'  meant  two  different  kinds  of  in- 
trinsic nature,  immediately,  intuitively,  and 
infallibly  discernible,  and  each  fixed  forever 
in  whatever  bit  of  experience  it  qualified, 
one  does  not  see  how  there  could  ever  have 
arisen  any  room  for  doubt  or  ambiguity. 
But  if,  on  the  contrary,  these  words  are 
words  of  sorting,  ambiguity  is  natural.  For 
then,  as  soon  as  the  relations  of  a  thing  are 
sufficiently  various  it  can  be  sorted  variously. 

1  It  is  enough  for  my  present  purpose  if  the  appreciative  characters 
but  seem  to  act  thus.  Believers  in  an  activity  an  sich,  other  than  our 
mental  experiences  of  activity,  will  find  some  farther  reflections  on  the 
subject  in  my  address  on  'The  Experience  of  Activity.'  [The  next 
essay.  Cf.  especially,  p.  169.    Ed.] 

152 


THE  PLACE  OF  AFFECTIONAL  FACTS 

Take  a  mass  of  carrion,  for  example,  and  the 
'disgustingness'  which  for  us  is  part  of  the 
experience.  The  sun  caresses  it,  and  the 
zephyr  wooes  it  as  if  it  were  a  bed  of  roses. 
So  the  disgustingness  fails  to  operate  within 
the  realm  of  suns  and  breezes,  —  it  does  not 
function  as  a  physical  quality.  But  the  carrion 
*  turns  our  stomach'  by  what  seems  a  direct 
operation  —  it  does  function  physically,  there- 
fore, in  that  limited  part  of  physics.  We  can 
treat  it  as  physical  or  as  non-physical  accord- 
ing as  we  take  it  in  the  narrower  or  in  the  wider 
context,  and  conversely,  of  course,  we  must 
treat  it  as  non-mental  or  as  mental. 

Our  body  itself  is  the  palmary  instance  of 
the  ambiguous.  Sometimes  I  treat  my  body 
purely  as  a  part  of  outer  nature.  Sometimes, 
again,  I  think  of  it  as  'mine,'  I  sort  it  with 
the  'me,'  and  then  certain  local  changes  and 
determinations  in  it  pass  for  spiritual  happen- 
ings. Its  breathing  is  my  'thinking,'  its  sen- 
sorial adjustments  are  my  'attention,'  its 
kinesthetic  alterations  are  my  'efforts,'  its 
visceral    perturbations    are    my    'emotions.' 

153 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

The  obstinate  controversies  that  have  arisen 
over  such  statements  as  these  (which  sound  so 
paradoxical,  and  which  can  yet  be  made  so 
seriously)  prove  how  hard  it  is  to  decide  by 
bare  introspection  what  it  is  in  experiences 
that  shall  make  them  either  spiritual  or  ma- 
terial. It  surely  can  be  nothing  intrinsic  in 
the  individual  experience.  It  is  their  way  of 
behaving  towards  each  other,  their  system  of 
relations,  their  function;  and  all  these  things 
vary  with  the  context  in  which  we  find  it 
opportune  to  consider  them. 

I  think  I  may  conclude,  then  (and  I  hope 
that  my  readers  are  now  ready  to  conclude 
with  me),  that  the  pretended  spirituality  of 
our  emotions  and  of  our  attributes  of  value, 
so  far  from  proving  an  objection  to  the  philo- 
sophy of  pure  experience,  does,  when  rightly 
discussed  and  accounted  for,  serve  as  one  of 
its  best  corroborations. 


VI 

THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY1 

Brethren  of  the  Psychological  Association: 

In  casting  about  me  for  a  subject  for  your 
President  this  year  to  talk  about  it  has  seemed 
to  me  that  our  experiences  of  activity  would 
form  a  good  one ;  not  only  because  the  topic 
is  so  naturally  interesting,  and  because  it  has 
lately  led  to  a  good  deal  of  rather  inconclusive 
discussion,  but  because  I  myself  am  growing 
more  and  more  interested  in  a  certain  system- 
atic way  of  handling  questions,  and  want  to  get 
others  interested  also,  and  this  question  strikes 
me  as  one  in  which,  although  I  am  painfully 
aware  of  my  inability  to  communicate  new 
discoveries  or  to  reach  definitive  conclusions, 
I  yet  can  show,  in  a  rather  definite  manner, 
how  the  method  works. 

1  President's  Address  before  the  American  Psychological  Associa- 
tion, Philadelphia  Meeting,  December,  1904.  [Reprinted  from  The 
Psychological  Review,  vol.  xii,  No.  1,  Jan.,  1905.  Also  reprinted,  with 
some  omissions,  as  Appendix  B,  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  pp.  370-394. 
Pp.  166-167  have  also  been  reprinted  in  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy, 
p.  212.  The  present  essay  is  referred  to  in  ibid.,  p.  219,  note.  The 
author's  corrections  have  been  adopted  for  the  present  text.  Ed.J 

155 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

The  way  of  handling  things  I  speak  of,  is,  as 
you  already  will  have  suspected,  that  known 
sometimes  as  the  pragmatic  method,  some- 
times as  humanism,  sometimes  as  Dewey  ism, 
and  in  France,  by  some  of  the  disciples  of 
Bergson,as  the  Philosophic  nouvelle.  Professor 
Woodbridge's  Journal  of  Philosophy1  seems 
unintentionally  to  have  become  a  sort  of  meet- 
ing place  for  those  who  follow  these  tenden- 
cies in  America.  There  is  only  a  dim  identity 
among  them;  and  the  most  that  can  be  said  at 
present  is  that  some  sort  of  gestation  seems  to 
be  in  the  atmosphere,  and  that  almost  any  day 
a  man  with  a  genius  for  rinding  the  right  word 
for  things  may  hit  upon  some  unifying  and 
conciliating  formula  that  will  make  so  much 
vaguely  similar  aspiration  crystallize  into 
more  definite  form. 

I  myself  have  given  the  name  of  'radical 
empiricism'  to  that  version  of  the  tendency  in 
question  which  I  prefer;  and  I  propose,  if  you 
will  now  let  me,  to  illustrate  what  I  mean  by 
radical  empiricism,  by  applying  it  to  activity 

1  [The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods.] 
156 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

as  an  example,  hoping  at  the  same  time  inci- 
dentally to  leave  the  general  problem  of  activ- 
ity in  a  slightly  —  I  fear  very  slightly  —  more 
manageable  shape  than  before. 

Mr.  Bradley  calls  the  question  of  activity  a 
scandal  to  philosophy,  and  if  one  turns  to  the 
current  literature  of  the  subject  —  his  own 
writings  included  —  one  easily  gathers  what 
he  means.  The  opponents  cannot  even  under- 
stand one  another.  Mr.  Bradley  says  to  Mr. 
Ward:  "I  do  not  care  what  your  oracle  is, 
and  your  preposterous  psychology  may  here  be 
gospel  if  you  please;  .  .  .  but  if  the  revela- 
tion does  contain  a  meaning,  I  will  commit 
myself  to  this :  either  the  oracle  is  so  confused 
that  its  signification  is  not  discoverable,  or, 
upon  the  other  hand,  if  it  can  be  pinned  down 
to  any  definite  statement,  then  that  state- 
ment will  be  false."  !  Mr.  Ward  in  turn  says 
of  Mr.  Bradley:  "I  cannot  even  imagine  the 
state  of  mind  to  which  his  description  applies. 
.  .  .  [It]  reads  like  an  unintentional  travesty 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  second  edition,   pp.  116-117.  —  Ob- 
viously written  at  Ward,  though  Ward's  name  is  not  mentioned. 

157 


essays  i;n  radical  empiricism 

of  Herbartian  psychology  by  one  who  has 
tried  to  improve  upon  it  without  being  at  the 
pains  to  master  it."1  Munsterberg  excludes  a 
view  opposed  to  his  own  by  saying  that  with 
any  one  who  holds  it  a  Ver standi gung  with 
him  is  " grundsatzlich  ausgeschlossen" ;  and 
Royce,  in  a  review  of  Stout,2  hauls  him  over 
the  coals  at  great  length  for  defending  'effi- 
cacy* in  a  way  which  I,  for  one,  never  gath- 
ered from  reading  him,  and  which  I  have 
heard  Stout  himself  say  was  quite  foreign  to 
the  intention  of  his  text. 

In  these  discussions  distinct  questions  are 
habitually  jumbled  and  different  points  of 
view  are  talked  of  durcheinander. 

(1)  There  is  a  psychological  question:  "Have 
we  perceptions  of  activity?  and  if  so,  what  are 
they  Jike,  and  when  and  where  do  we  have 
them?" 

(2)  There  is  a  metaphysical  question :  "  Is 
there  a  fact  of  activity  ?  and  if  so,  what  idea 
must  we  frame  of  it?  What  is  it  like?  and  what 

1  [Mind,  vol.  xii,  1887,  pp.  573-574.] 

2  Mind,  N.  S..  vol.  vi,  [1897],  p.  379. 

158 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

does  it  do,  if  it  does  anything?"  And  finally 
there  is  a  logical  question : 

(3)  "Whence  do  we  know  activity?  By  our 
own  feelings  of  it  solely?  or  by  some  other 
source  of  information?"  Throughout  page 
after  page  of  the  literature  one  knows  not 
which  of  these  questions  is  before  one;  and 
mere  description  of  the  surface-show  of  experi- 
ence is  proferred  as  if  it  implicitly  answered 
every  one  of  them.  No  one  of  the  disputants, 
moreover,  tries  to  show  what  pragmatic  con- 
sequences his  own  view  would  carry,  or  what 
assignable  particular  differences  in  any  one's 
experience  it  would  make  if  his  adversary's 
were  triumphant. 

It  seems  to  me  that  if  radical  empiricism  be 
good  for  anything,  it  ought,  with  its  pragmatic 
method  and  its  principle  of  pure"  experience, 
to  be  able  to  avoid  such  tangles,  or  at  least 
to  simplify  them  somewhat.  The  pragmatic 
method  starts  from  the  postulate  that  there  is 
no  difference  of  truth  that  does  n't  make  a 
difference  of  fact  somewhere;  and  it  seeks  to 
determine  the  meaning  of  all  differences  of 

159 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

opinion  by  making  the  discussion  hinge  as  soon 
as  possible  upon  some  practical  or  particular 
issue.  The  principle  of  pure  experience  is  also 
a  methodical  postulate.  Nothing  shall  be  ad- 
mitted as  fact,  it  says,  except  what  can  be 
experienced  at  some  definite  time  by  some  ex- 
perient;  and  for  every  feature  of  fact  ever  so 
experienced,  a  definite  place  must  be  found 
somewhere  in  the  final  system  of  reality.  In 
other  words:  Everything  real  must  be  experi- 
enceable  somewhere,  and  every  kind  of  thing 
experienced  must  somewhere  be  real. 

Armed  with  these  rules  of  method  let  us  see 
what  face  theproblems  of  activity  present  to  us. 

By  the  principle  of  pure  experience,  either 
the  word  'activity'  must  have  no  meaning  at 
all,  or  else  the  original  type  and  model  of  wrhat 
it  means  must  lie  in  some  concrete  kind  of 
experience  that  can  be  definitely  pointed  out. 
Whatever  ulterior  judgments  we  may  eventu- 
ally come  to  make  regarding  activity,  that  sort 
of  thing  will  be  what  the  judgments  are  about. 
The  first  step  to  take,  then,  is  to  ask  where  in 
the  stream  of  experience  we  seem  to  find  what 

160 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

we  speak  of  as  activity.  What  we  are  to  think 
of  the  activity  thus  found  will  be  a  later 
question. 

Now  it  is  obvious  that  we  are  tempted  to 
affirm  activity  wherever  we  find  anything 
going  on.  Taken  in  the  broadest  sense,  any 
apprehension  of  something  doing,  is  an  expe- 
rience of  activity.  Were  our  world  describ- 
able  only  by  the  words  *  nothing  happening/ 
*  nothing  changing,'  *  nothing  doing,'  we  should 
unquestionably  call  it  an  *  inactive'  world. 
Bare  activity  then,  as  we  may  call  it,  means 
the  bare  fact  of  event  or  change.  *  Change  tak- 
ing place'  is  a  unique  content  of  experience, 
one  of  those  'conjunctive'  objects  which  radi- 
cal empiricism  seeks  so  earnestly  to  rehabili- 
tate and  preserve.  The  sense  of  activity  is  thus 
in  the  broadest  and  vaguest  way  synonymous 
with  the  sense  of  'life.'  We  should  feel  our 
own  subjective  life  at  least,  even  in  noticing 
and  proclaiming  an  otherwise  inactive  world. 
Our  own  reaction  on  its  monotony  would  be 
the  one  thing  experienced  there  in  the  form  of 
something  coming  to  pass. 

161 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

This  seems  to  be  what  certain  writers  have 
in  mind  when  they  insist  that  for  an  experient 
to  be  at  all  is  to  be  active.  It  seems  to  justify, 
or  at  any  rate  to  explain,  Mr.  Ward's  expres- 
sion that  we  are  only  as  we  are  active,1  for 
we  are  only  as  experients;  and  it  rules  out  Mr. 
Bradley's  contention  that  "there  is  no  original 
experience  of  anything  like  activity."  2  What 
we  ought  to  say  about  activities  thus  ele- 
mentary, whose  they  are,  what  they  effect,  or 
whether  indeed  they  effect  anything  at  all  — 
these  are  later  questions,  to  be  answered  only 
when  the  field  of  experience  is  enlarged. 

Bare  activity  would  thus  be  predicable, 
though  there  were  no  definite  direction,  no 
actor,  and  no  aim.  Mere  restless  zigzag  move- 
ment, or  a  wild  Ideenflucht,  or  Rhapsodie  der 
Wakrnehmungen,  as  Kant  would  say,3  would 

1  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  vol.  II,  p.  245.  One  thinks  natur- 
ally of  the  peripatetic  actus  primus  and  actus  secundus  here.  ["Actus 
autem  est  duplex:  primus  et  secundus.  Actus  quidem  primus  est 
forma,  et  integritas  sei.  Actus  autem  secundus  est  operatio."  Thomas 
Aquinas  :  Summa  Theologica,  edition  of  Leo  XIII,  (189-i),  vol.  i, 
p.  391.  Cf.  also  Blanc:  Dictionnaire  de  Philosophie,  under  'acte.' 
Ed.] 

2  [Appearance  and  Reality,  second  edition,  p.  116.] 

8  [Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunft,  Werke,  (1905),  vol.  rv,  p.  110  (trans. 
by  Max  Miiller,  second  edition,  p.  128).] 

162 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

constitute  an  active  as  distinguished  from  an 
inactive  world. 

But  in  this  actual  world  of  ours,  as  it  is 
given,  a  part  at  least  of  the  activity  comes 
with  definite  direction;  it  comes  with  desire 
and  sense  of  goal;  it  comes  complicated  with 
resistances  which  it  overcomes  or  succumbs  to, 
and  with  the  efforts  which  the  feeling  of  re- 
sistance so  often  provokes;  and  it  is  in  com- 
plex experiences  like  these  that  the  notions  of 
distinct  agents,  and  of  passivity  as  opposed 
to  activity  arise.  Here  also  the  notion  of 
causal  efficacy  comes  to  birth.  Perhaps  the 
most  elaborate  work  ever  done  in  descriptive 
psychology  has  been  the  analysis  by  various 
recent  writers  of  the  more  complex  activity- 
situations.1   In  their  descriptions,  exquisitely 

1  I  refer  to  such  descriptive  work  as  Ladd's  {Psychology,  Descriptive 
and  Explanatory,  part  I,  chap,  v,  part  n,  chap,  xi,  part  in,  chaps. 
xxv  and  xxvi) ;  as  Sully's  ( The  Human  Mind,  part  v) ;  as  Stout's 
(Analytic  Psychology,  book  i,  chap,  vi,  and  book  n,  chaps,  i,  n,  and 
m);  as  Bradley's  (in  his  long  series  of  analytic  articles  on  Psychology 
in  Mind);  as  Titchener's  (Outline  of  Psychology,  part  I,  chap,  vi); 
as  Shand's  (Mind,  N.  S.,  in,  449;  iv,  450;  vi,  289);  as  Ward's 
(Mind,  xii,  67;  564);  as  Loveday's  (Mind,  N.  S.,  x,  455);  as 
Lipps's  (Vom  Fiihlen,  Wollen  und  Denken,  1902,  chaps,  n,  iv,  vi) ; 
and  as  Bergson's  (Revue  Philosophique,  Lin,  1)  —  to  mention  only 
a  few  writings  which  I  immediately  recall. 

163 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

subtle  some  of  them,1  the  activity  appears  as 
the  gestaltqualitat  or  the  jundirte  inhalt  (or  as 
whatever  else  you  may  please  to  call  the  con- 
junctive form)  which  the  content  falls  into 
when  we  experience  it  in  the  ways  which  the 
describers  set  forth.  Those  factors  in  those 
relations  are  what  we  mean  by  activity-situa- 
tions; and  to  the  possible  enumeration  and 
accumulation  of  their  circumstances  and  in- 
gredients there  would  seem  to  be  no  natural 
bound.  Every  hour  of  human  life  could  con- 
tribute to  the  picture  gallery;  and  this  is  the 
only  fault  that  one  can  find  with  such  descrip- 
tive industry  —  where  is  it  going  to  stop? 
Ought  we  to  listen  forever  to  verbal  pictures 
of  what  we  have  already  in  concrete  form  in 
our  own  breasts?  2  They  never  take  us  off  the 
superficial  plane.  We  knew  the  facts  already  — 
less  spread  out  and  separated,  to  be  sure  —  but 

1  Their  existence  forms  a  curious  commentary  on  Prof.  Mtinster- 
berg's  dogma  that  will-attitudes  are  not  describable.  He  himself  has 
contributed  in  a  superior  way  to  their  description,  both  in  his  Willen- 
skandlung,  and  in  his  Grundziige  [der  Psychologie],  part  n,  chap, 
ix,  §  7. 

2  I  ought  myself  to  cry  peccavi,  having  been  a  voluminous  sinner  in 
my  own  chapter  on  the  will.  [Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  n,  chap. 

XXVI.] 

164 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

we  knew  them  still.  We  always  felt  our  own 
activity,  for  example,  as  'the  expansion  of  an 
idea  with  which  our  Self  is  identified,  against 
an  obstacle';  *  and  the  following  out  of  such  a 
definition  through  a  multitude  of  cases  elabo- 
rates the  obvious  so  as  to  be  little  more  than  an 
exercise  in  synonymic  speech. 

All  the  descriptions  have  to  trace  familiar 
outlines,  and  to  use  familiar  terms.  The  act- 
ivity is,  for  example,  attributed  either  to  a 
physical  or  to  a  mental  agent,  and  is  either 
aimless  or  directed.  If  directed  it  shows  ten- 
dency. The  tendency  may  or  may  not  be  re- 
sisted. If  not,  we  call  the  activity  immanent,  as 
when  a  body  moves  in  empty  space  by  its  mo- 
mentum, or  our  thoughts  wander  at  their  own 
sweet  will.  If  resistance  is  met,  its  agent  com- 
plicates the  situation.  If  now,  in  spite  of  resist- 
ance, the  original  tendency  continues,  effort 
makes  its  appearance,  and  along  with  effort, 
strain  or  squeeze.  Will,  in  the  narrower  sense 
of  the  word,  then  comes  upon  the  scene,  when- 

1  [Cf.  F.  H.  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  second  edition,  pp. 
96-97.] 

165 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ever,  along  with  the  tendency,  the  strain  and 
squeeze  are  sustained.  But  the  resistance  may 
be  great  enough  to  check  the  tendency,  or  even 
to  reverse  its  path.  In  that  case,  we  (if  *  we '  were 
the  original  agents  or  subjects  of  the  tendency) 
are  overpowered.  The  phenomenon  turns  into 
one  of  tension  simply,  or  of  necessity  suc- 
cumbed-to,  according  as  the  opposing  power  is 
only  equal,  or  is  superior  to  ourselves. 

Whosoever  describes  an  experience  in  such 
terms  as  these  describes  an  experience  of  act- 
ivity. If  the  word  have  any  meaning,  it  must 
denote  what  there  is  found.  There  is  complete 
activity  in  its  original  and  first  intention. 
What  it  is  'known-as'  is  what  there  appears. 
The  experiencer  of  such  a  situation  possesses  all 
that  the  idea  contains.  He  feels  the  tendency, 
the  obstacle,  the  will,  the  strain,  the  triumph,  or 
the  passive  giving  up,  just  as  he  feels  the  time, 
the  space,  the  swiftness  or  intensity,  the  move- 
ment, the  weight  and  color,  the  pain  and  pleas- 
ure, the  complexity,  or  whatever  remaining 
characters  the  situation  may  involve.  He  goes 
through  all  that  ever  can  be  imagined  where 

166 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

activity  is  supposed.  If  we  suppose  activities 
to  go  on  outside  of  our  experience,  it  is  in  forms 
like  these  that  we  must  suppose  them,  or  else 
give  them  some  other  name;  for  the  word 
*  activity '  has  no  imaginable  content  whatever 
save  these  experiences  of  process,  obstruction, 
striving,  strain,  or  release,  ultimate  qualia  as 
they  are  of  the  life  given  us  to  be  known. 

Were  this  the  end  of  the  matter,  one  might 
think  that  whenever  we  had  successfully  lived 
through  an  activity-situation  we  should  have 
to  be  permitted,  without  provoking  contra- 
diction, to  say  that  we  had  been  really  active, 
that  we  had  met  real  resistance  and  had  really 
prevailed.  Lotze  somewhere  says  that  to  be  an 
entity  all  that  is  necessary  is  to  gelten  as  an 
entity,  to  operate,  or  be  felt,  experienced,  re- 
cognized, or  in  any  way  realized,  as  such.1  In 
our  activity-experiences  the  activity  assur- 
edly fulfils  Lotze's  demand.  It  makes  itself 
gelten.  It  is  witnessed  at  its  work.  No  matter 
what  activities  there  may  really  be  in  this  ex- 
traordinary universe  of  ours,  it  is  impossible 

1  [Cf.  above,  p.  59,  note.] 
167 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

for  us  to  conceive  of  any  one  of  them  being 
either  lived  through  or  authentically  known 
otherwise  than  in  this  dramatic  shape  of  some- 
thing sustaining  a  felt  purpose  against  felt 
obstacles  and  overcoming  or^  being  overcome. 
What  *  sustaining '  means  here  is  clear  to  anyone 
who  has  lived  through  the  experience,  but  to 
no  one  else;  just  as  'loud,'  'red,'  *  sweet,'  mean 
something  only  to  beings  with  ears,  eyes,  and 
tongues.  The  percipi  in  these  originals  of  ex- 
perience is  the  esse;  the  curtain  is  the  picture. 
If  there  is  anything  hiding  in  the  background, 
it  ought  not  to  be  called  activity,  but  should 
get  itself  another  name. 

This  seems  so  obviously  true  that  one  might 
well  experience  astonishment  at  finding  so 
many  of  the  ablest  writers  on  the  subject 
flatly  denying  that  the  activity  we  live  through 
in  these  situations  is  real.  Merely  to  feel  active 
is  not  to  be  active,  in  their  sight.  The  agents 
that  appear  in  the  experience  are  not  real 
agents,  the  resistances  do  not  really  resist,  the 
effects  that  appear  are  not  really  effects  at  all.1 

1  Verborum  gratid:  "The  feeling  of  activity  is  not  able,  qud  feeling, 
168 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

It  is  evident  from  this  that  mere  descriptive 
analysis  of  any  one  of  our  activity-experiences 
is  not  the  whole  story,  that  there  is  something 

to  tell  us  anything  about  activity"  (Loveday:  Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  x, 
[1901],  p.  463);  "A  sensation  or  feeling  or  sense  of  activity  ...  is  not, 
looked  at  in  another  way,  an  experience  of  activity  at  all.  It  is  a  mere 
sensation  shut  up  within  which  you  could  by  no  reflection  get  the 
idea  of  activity.  .  .  .  Whether  this  experience  is  or  is  not  later  on  a 
character  essential  to  our  perception  and  our  idea  of  activity,  it,  as  it 
comes  first,  is  not  in  itself  an  experience  of  activity  at  all.  It,  as  it 
comes  first,  is  only  so  for  extraneous  reasons  and  only  so  for  an  outside 
observer"  (Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  second  edition,  p.  605); 
"In  dem  Tatigkeitsgefiihle  liegt  an  sich  nicht  der  geringste  Beweis 
fur  das  Vorhandensein  einer  psychischen  Tatigkeit"  (Miinsterberg: 
Grundziige  der  Psychologie).  I  could  multiply  similar  quotations  and 
would  have  introduced  some  of  them  into  my  text  to  make  it  more 
concrete,  save  that  the  mingling  of  different  points  of  view  in  most  of 
these  author's  discussions  (not  in  Miinsterberg's)  make  it  impossible  to 
disentangle  exactly  what  they  mean.  I  am  sure  in  any  case,  to  be 
accused  of  misrepresenting  them  totally,  even  in  this  note,  by  omission 
of  the  context,  so  the  less  I  name  names  and  the  more  I  stick  to  ab- 
stract characterization  of  a  merely  possible  style  of  opinion,  the  safer 
it  will  be.  And  apropos  of  misunderstandings,  I  may  add  to  this  note 
a  complaint  on  my  own  account.  Professor  Stout,  in  the  excellent 
chapter  on  '  Mental  Activity,'  in  vol.  I  of  his  Analytic  Psychology, 
takes  me  to  task  for  identifying  spiritual  activity  with  certain  mus- 
cular feelings  and  gives  quotations  to  bear  him  out.  They  are  from 
certain  paragraphs  on  '  the  Self,'  in  which  my  attempt  was  to  show 
what  the  central  nucleus  of  the  activities  that  we  call  'ours'  is. 
[Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  I,  pp.  299-305.]  I  found  it  in  certain 
intracephalic  movements  which  we  habitually  oppose,  as  'subject- 
ive,' to  the  activities  of  the  transcorporeal  world.  I  sought  to  show 
that  there  is  no  direct  evidence  that  we  feel  the  activity  of  an 
inner  spiritual]  agent  as  such  (I  should  now  say  the  activity  of 
'consciousness'  as  such,  see  [the  first  essay],  'Does  Consciousness 
Exist?').  There  are,  in  fact,  three  distinguishable  'activities'  in 
the  field  of  discussion:  the  elementary  activity  involved  in  the  mere 
that  of  experience,  in  the  fact  that  something  is  going  on,  and  the  far- 
ther specification  of  this  something  into  two  whats,  an  activity  felt  as 

169 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

still  to  tell  about  them  that  has  led  such  able 
writers  to  conceive  of  a  Simon-pure  activity, 
of  an  activity  an  sick,  that  does,  and  does  n't 

'ours,'  and  an  activity  ascribed  to  objects.  Stout,  as  I  apprehend  him, 
identifies  'our'  activity  with  that  of  the  total  experience-process,  and 
when  I  circumscribe  it  as  a  part  thereof,  accuses  me  of  treating  it  as  a 
sort  of  external  appendage  to  itself  (Stout:  op.  cit.,  vol.  r,  pp.  162-163), 
as  if  I  'separated  the  activity  from  the  process  which  is  active.'  But 
all  the  processes  in  question  are  active,  and  their  activity  is  inseparable 
from  their  being.  My  book  raised  only  the  question  of  which  activity 
deserved  the  name  of  'ours.'  So  far  as  we  are  'persons,'  and  contrasted 
and  opposed  to  an  'environment,'  movements  in  our  body  figure  as 
our  activities;  and  I  am  unable  to  find  any  other  activities  that  are 
ours  in  this  strictly  personal  sense.  There  is  a  w'ider  sense  in  which 
the  whole  'choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  the  earth,'  and  their 
activities,  are  ours,  for  they  are  our  'objects.'  But  'we'  are  here  only 
another  name  for  the  total  process  of  experience,  another  name  for  all 
that  is,  in  fact;  and  I  was  dealing  with  the  personal  and  individualized 
self  exclusively  in  the  passages  with  which  Professor  Stout  finds  fault. 
The  individualized  self,  which  I  believe  to  be  the  only  thing  pro- 
perly called  self,  is  a  part  of  the  content  of  the  world  experienced.  The 
world  experienced  (otherwise  called  the  '  field  of  consciousness ')  comes 
at  all  times  with  our  body  as  its  centre,  centre  of  vision,  centre  of  ac- 
tion, centre  of  interest.  Where  the  body  is  is  'here';  when  the  body 
acts  is  'now';  what  the  body  touches  is  'this';  all  other  things  are 
'there'  and  'then'  and  'that.'  These  words  of  emphasized  position 
imply  a  systematization  of  things  with  reference  to  a  focus  of  action 
and  interest  which  lies  in  the  body;  and  the  systematization  is  now  so 
instinctive  (was  it  ever  not  so?)  that  no  developed  or  active  experience 
exists  for  us  at  all  except  in  that  ordered  form.  So  far  as  'thoughts' 
and  'feelings'  can  be  active,  their  activity  terminates  in  the  activity 
of  the  body,  and  only  through  first  arousing  its  activities  can  they 
begin  to  change  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  [Cf.  also  A  Pluralistic 
Universe,  p.  344,  note  8.  Ed.]  The  body  is  the  storm  centre,  the  origin 
of  co-ordinates,  the  constant  place  of  stress  in  all  that  experience- 
train.  Everything  circles  round  it,  and  is  felt  from  its  point  of  view. 
The  word  'I,'  then,  is  primarily  a  noun  of  position,  just  like  'this'  and 
'here.'  Activities  attached  to  'this'  position  have  prerogative  empha- 
sis, and,  if  activities  have  feelings,  must  be  felt  in  a  peculiar  way.  The 

170 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

merely  appear  to  us  to  do,  and  compared  with 
whose  real  doing  all  this  phenomenal  activity 
is  but  a  specious  sham. 

The  metaphysical  question  opens  here;  and 
I  think  that  the  state  of  mind  of  one  possessed 
by  it  is  often  something  like  this:  "It  is  all  very 
well,"  we  may  imagine  him  saying,  "to  talk 
about  certain  experience-series  taking  on  the 
form  of  feelings  of  activity,  just  as  they  might 
take  on  musical  or  geometric  forms.  Suppose 
that  they  do  so;  suppose  we  feel  a  will  to  stand 
a  strain.  Does  our  feeling  do  more  than  record 
the  fact  that  the  strain  is  sustained?  The  real 
activity,  meanwhile,  is  the  doing  of  the  fact; 
and  what  is  the  doing  made  of  before  the  record 
is  made.  What  in  the  will  enables  it  to  act  thus? 
And  these  trains  of  experience  themselves,  in 
which  activities  appear,  what  makes  them  go 
at  all?  Does  the  activity  in  one  bit  of  experi- 
ence bring  the  next  bit  into  being?  As  an  em- 
word  'my'  designates  the  kind  of  emphasis.  I  see  no  inconsistency 
whatever  in  defending,  on  the  one  hand, '  my '  activities  as  unique  and 
opposed  to  those  of  outer  nature,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  in  affirming, 
after  introspection,  that  they  consist  in  movements  in  the  head.  The 
'  my '  of  them  is  the  emphasis,  the  feeling  of  perspective-interest  in 
which  they  are  dyed. 

171 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

piricist  you  cannot  say  so,  for  you  have  just 
declared  activity  to  be  only  a  kind  of  synthetic 
object,  or  conjunctive  relation  experienced  be- 
tween bits  of  experience  already  made.  But 
what  made  them  at  all?  What  propels  experi- 
ence iiberhaupt  into  being?  There  is  the  act- 
ivity that  operates;  the  activity  felt  is  only 
its  superficial  sign." 

To  the  metaphysical  question,  popped  upon 
us  in  this  way,  I  must  pay  serious  attention 
ere  I  end  my  remarks ;  but,  before  doing  so,  let 
me  show  that  without  leaving  the  immediate 
reticulations  of  experience,  or  asking  what 
makes  activity  itself  act,  we  still  find  the  dis- 
tinction between  less  real  and  more  real  act- 
ivities forced  upon  us,  and  are  driven  to  much 
soul-searching  on  the  purely  phenomenal  plane. 

We  must  not  forget,  namely,  in  talking  of 
the  ultimate  character  of  our  activity-experi- 
ences, that  each  of  them  is  but  a  portion  of  a 
wider  world,  one  link  in  the  vast  chain  of  pro- 
cesses of  experience  out  of  which  history  is 
made.  Each  partial  process,  to  him  who  lives 
through  it,  defines  itself  by  its  origin  and  its 

172 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

goal;  but  to  an  observer  with  a  wider  mind- 
span  who  should  live  outside  of  it,  that  goal 
would  appear  but  as  a  provisional  halting- 
place,  and  the  subjectively  felt  activity  would 
be  seen  to  continue  into  objective  activities 
that  led  far  beyond.  We  thus  acquire  a  habit, 
in  discussing  activity-experiences,  of  defining 
them  by  their  relation  to  something  more.  If 
an  experience  be  one  of  narrow  span,  it  will  be 
mistaken  as  to  what  activity  it  is  and  whose. 
You  think  that  you  are  acting  while  you  are 
only  obeying  someone's  push.  You  think  you 
are  doing  this,  but  you  are  doing  something  of 
which  you  do  not  dream.  For  instance,  you 
think  you  are  but  drinking  this  glass;  but  you 
are  really  creating  the  liver-cirrhosis  that  will 
end  your  days.  You  think  you  are  just  driv- 
ing this  bargain,  but,  as  Stevenson  says  some- 
where, you  are  laying  down  a  link  in  the  policy 
of  mankind. 

Generally  speaking,  the  onlooker,  with  his 
wider  field  of  vision,  regards  the  ultimate  out- 
come of  an  activity  as  what  it  is  more  really 
doing;  and  the  most  previous  agent  ascertain- 

173 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

able,  being  the  first  source  of  action,  he  regards 
as  the  most  real  agent  in  the  field.  The  others 
but  transmit  that  agent's  impulse;  on  him 
we  put  responsibility;  we  name  him  when  one 
asks  us  '  Who  's  to  blame  ? ' 

But  the  most  previous  agents  ascertainable, 
instead  of  being  of  longer  span,  are  often  of 
much  shorter  span  than  the  activity  in  view. 
Brain-cells  are  our  best  example.  My  brain- 
cells  are  believed  to  excite  each  other  from 
next  to  next  (by  contiguous  transmission  of 
katabolic  alteration,  let  us  say)  and  to  have 
been  doing  so  long  before  this  present  stretch 
of  lecturing-activity  on  my  part  began.  If  any 
one  cell-group  stops  its  activity,  the  lecturing 
will  cease  or  show  disorder  of  form.  Cessante 
causa,  cessat  et  effectus  —  does  not  this  look  as 
if  the  short-span  brain  activities  were  the  more 
real  activities,  and  the  lecturing  activities 
on  my  part  only  their  effects?  Moreover,  as 
Hume  so  clearly  pointed  out,1  in  my  mental 
activity-situation  the  words  physically  to  be 

1  [Enquiry   Concerning  Human   Understanding,   sect,  vn,  part   I, 
Selby-Bigge's  edition,  pp.  65  ff.] 

174 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

uttered  are  represented  as  the  activity's  im- 
mediate goal.  These  words,  however,  cannot 
be  uttered  without  intermediate  physical  pro- 
cesses in  the  bulb  and  vagi  nerves,  which  pro- 
cesses nevertheless  fail  to  figure  in  the  mental 
activity-series  at  all.  That  series,  therefore, 
since  it  leaves  out  vitally  real  steps  of  action, 
cannot  represent  the  real  activities.  Itjs  some- 
thing purely  subjective;  the  facts  of  activity 
are  elsewhere.  They  are  something  far  more 
interstitial,  so  to  speak,  than  what  my  feelings 
record. 

The  real  facts  of  activity  that  have  in  point 
of  fact  been  systematically  pleaded  for  by 
philosophers  have,  so  far  as  my  information 
goes,  been  of  three  principal  types. 

The  first  type  takes  a  consciousness  of  wider 
time-span  than  ours  to  be  the  vehicle  of  the 
more  real  activity.  Its  will  is  the  agent,  and  its 
purpose  is  the  action  done. 

The  second  type  assumes  that  *  ideas'  strug- 
gling with  one  another  are  the  agents,  and 
that  the  prevalence  of  one  set  of  them  is  the 
action. 

175 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

The  third  type  believes  that  nerve-cells  are 
the  agents,  and  that  resultant  motor  discharges 
are  the  acts  achieved. 

Now  if  we  must  de-realize  our  immediately 
felt  activity-situations  for  the  benefit  of  either 
of  these  types  of  substitute,  we  ought  to  know 
what  the  substitution  practically  involves. 
What  practical  difference  ought  it  to  make  if, 
instead  of  saying  naively  that  'I'  am  active 
now  in  delivering  this  address,  I  say  that  a 
wider  thinker  is  active,  or  that  certain  ideas  are 
active,  or  that  certain  nerve-cells  are  active,  in 
producing  the  result? 

This  would  be  the  pragmatic  meaning  of  the 
three  hypotheses.  Let  us  take  them  in  succes- 
sion in  seeking  a  reply. 

If  we  assume  a  wider  thinker,  it  is  evident 

that  his  purposes  envelope  mine.   I  am  really 

lecturing  for  him;  and  although  I  cannot  surely 

know  to  what  end,  yet  if  I  take  him  religiously, 

I  can  trust  it  to  be  a  good  end,  and  willingly 

connive.   I  can  be  happy  in  thinking  that  my 

activity  transmits  his  impulse,  and  that  his 

ends  prolong  my  own.  So  long  as  I  take  him 

176 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

religiously,  in  short,  he  does  not  de-realize  my 
activities.  He  tends  rather  to  corroborate  the 
reality  of  them,  so  long  as  I  believe  both  them 
and  him  to  be  good. 

When  now  we  turn  to  ideas,  the  case  is  dif- 
ferent, inasmuch  as  ideas  are  supposed  by  the 
association  psychology  to  influence  each  other 
only  from  next  to  next.  The  'span'  of  an  idea 
or  pair  of  ideas,  is  assumed  to  be  much  smaller 
instead  of  being  larger  than  that  of  my  total 
conscious  field.  The  same  results  may  get 
worked  out  in  both  cases,  for  this  address  is 
being  given  anyhow.  But  the  ideas  supposed 
to  'really'  work  it  out  had  no  prevision  of  the 
whole  of  it;  and  if  I  was  lecturing  for  an  abso- 
lute thinker  in  the  former  case,  so,  by  similar 
reasoning,  are  my  ideas  now  lecturing  for  me, 
that  is,  accomplishing  unwittingly  a  result 
which  I  approve  and  adopt.  But,  when  this 
passing  lecture  is  over,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
bare  notion  that  ideas  have  been  its  agents 
that  would  seem  to  guarantee  that  my  present 
purposes  in  lecturing  will  be  prolonged.  I  may 

have  ulterior  developments  in  view;  but  there 

177 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

is  no  certainty  that  my  ideas  as  such  will  wish 
to,  or  be  able  to,  work  them  out. 

The  like  is  true  if  nerve-cells  be  the  agents. 
The  activity  of  a  nerve-cell  must  be  conceived 
of  as  a  tendency  of  exceedingly  short  reach,  an 
' impulse'  barely  spanning  the  way  to  the  next 
cell  —  for  surely  that  amount  of  actual  'pro- 
cess' must  be  'experienced'  by  the  cells  if  what 
happens  between  them  is  to  deserve  the  name 
of  activity  at  all.  But  here  again  the  gross 
resultant,  as  I  perceive  it,  is  indifferent  to  the 
agents,  and  neither  wished  or  willed  or  fore- 
seen. Their  being  agents  now  congruous  with 
my  will  gives  me  no  guarantee  that  like  results 
will  recur  again  from  their  activity.  In  point 
of  fact,  all  sorts  of  other  results  do  occur.  My 
mistakes,  impotencies,  perversions,  mental  ob- 
structions, and  frustrations  generally,  are  also 
results  of  the  activity  of  cells.  Although  these 
are  letting  me  lecture  now,  on  other  occasions 
they  make  me  do  things  that  I  would  willingly 
not  do. 

The  question  Whose  is  the  real  activity?  is 
thus  tantamount  to  the  question  What  will  be 

178 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

the  actual  results?  Its  interest  is  dramatic;  how 
will  things  work  out?  If  the  agents  are  of 
one  sort,  oneway;  if  of  another  sort,  they  may 
work  out  very  differently.  The  pragmatic 
meaning  of  the  various  alternatives,  in  short, 
is  great.  It  makes  no  merely  verbal  difference 
which  opinion  we  take  up. 

You  see  it  is  the  old  dispute  come  back! 
Materialism  and  teleology;  elementary  short- 
span  actions  summing  themselves  '  blindly,'  or 
far  foreseen  ideals  coming  with  effort  into  act. 

Naively  we  believe,  and  humanly  and  dra- 
matically we  like  to  believe,  that  activities 
both  of  wider  and  of  narrower  span  are  at 
work  in  life  together,  that  both  are  real,  and 
that  the  long-span  tendencies  yoke  the  others 
in  their  service,  encouraging  them  in  the  right 
direction,  and  damping  them  when  they  tend 
in  other  ways.  But  how  to  represent  clearly 
the  modus  operandi  of  such  steering  of  small 
tendencies  by  large  ones  is  a  problem  which 
metaphysical  thinkers  will  have  to  ruminate 
upon  for  many  years  to  come.    Even  if  such 

control  should  eventually  grow  clearly  pictur- 

179 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

able,  the  question  how  far  it  is  successfully 
exerted  in  this  actual  world  can  be  answered 
only  by  investigating  the  details  of  fact.  No 
philosophic  knowledge  of  the  general  nature 
and  constitution  of  tendencies,  or  of  the  rela- 
tion of  larger  to  smaller  ones,  can  help  us  to 
predict  which  of  all  the  various  competing 
tendencies  that  interest  us  in  this  universe  are 
likeliest  to  prevail.  We  know  as  an  empirical 
fact  that  far-seeing  tendencies  often  carry  out 
their  purpose,  but  we  know  also  that  they  are 
often  defeated  by  the  failure  of  some  com- 
temptibly  small  process  on  which  success  de- 
pends. A  little  thrombus  in  a  statesman's 
meningeal  artery  will  throw  an  empire  out  of 
gear.  I  can  therefore  not  even  hint  at  any  solu- 
tion of  the  pragmatic  issue.  I  have  only  wished 
to  show  you  that  that  issue  is  what  gives  the 
real  interest  to  all  inquiries  into  what  kinds  of 
activity  may  be  real.  Are  the  forces  that  really 
act  in  the  world  more  foreseeing  or  more  blind? 
As  between  'our*  activities  as  'we'  experience 
them,  and  those  of  our  ideas,  or  of  our  brain- 
cells,  the  issue  is  well-defined. 

180 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

I  said  a  while  back  l  that  I  should  return  to 
the  *  metaphysical'  question  before  ending;  so, 
with  a  few  words  about  that,  I  will  now  close 
my  remarks. 

In  whatever  form  we  hear  this  question  pro- 
pounded, I  think  that  it  always  arises  from  two 
things,  a  belief  that  causality  must  be  exerted 
in  activity,  and  a  wonder  as  to  how  causality  is 
made.  If  we  take  an  activity-situation  at  its 
face- value,  it  seems  as  if  we  caught  in  flagrante 
delicto  the  very  power  that  makes  facts  come 
and  be.  I  now  am  eagerly  striving,  for  ex- 
ample, to  get  this  truth  which  I  seem  half  to 
perceive,  into  words  which  shall  make  it  show 
more  clearly.  If  the  words  come,  it  will  seem  as 
if  the  striving  itself  had  drawn  or  pulled  them 
into  actuality  out  from  the  state  of  merely 
possible  being  in  which  they  were.  How  is  this 
feat  performed?  How  does  the  pulling  pull? 
How  do  I  get  my  hold  on  words  not  yet  exist- 
ent, and  when  they  come  by  what  means  have 
I  made  them  come?  Really  it  is  the  problem  of 
creation;  for  in  the  end  the  question  is:  How  do 

1  Page  172. 
181 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

I  make  them  be?  Real  activities  are  those 
that  really  make  things  be,  without  which 
the  things  are  not,  and  with  which  they  are 
there.  Activity,  so  far  as  we  merely  feel  it,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  only  an  impression  of  ours, 
it  may  be  maintained ;  and  an  impression  is, 
for  all  this  way  of  thinking,  only  a  shadow  of 
another  fact. 

Arrived  at  this  point,  I  can  do  little  more 
than  indicate  the  principles  on  which,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  a  radically  empirical  philosophy 
is  obliged  to  rely  in  handling  such" a  dispute. 

If  there  be  real  creative  activities  in  being, 
radical  empiricism  must  say,  somewhere  they 
must  be  immediately  lived.  Somewhere  the 
that  of  efficacious  causing  and  the  what  of  it 
must  be  experienced  in  one,  just  as  the  what 
and  the  that  of  'cold'  are  experienced  in  one 
whenever  a  man  has  the  sensation  of  cold  here 
and  now.  It  boots  not  to  say  that  our  sensa- 
tions are  fallible.  They  are  indeed;  but  to  see 
the  thermometer  contradict  us  when  we  say  *  it 
is  cold '  does  not  abolish  cold  as  a  specific  na- 
ture from  the  universe.   Cold  is  in  the  arctic 

182 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

circle  if  not  here.  Even  so,  to  feel  that  our 
train  is  moving  when  the  train  beside  our  win- 
dow moves,  to  see  the  moon  through  a  tele- 
scope come  twice  as  near,  or  to  see  two  pic- 
tures as  one  solid  when  we  look  through  a 
stereoscope  at  them,  leaves  motion,  near- 
ness, and  solidity  still  in  being  —  if  not  here, 
yet  each  in  its  proper  seat  elsewhere.  And 
wherever  the  seat  of  real  causality  is,  as  ulti- 
mately known  'for  true'  (in  nerve-processes, 
if  you  will,  that  cause  our  feelings  of  "act- 
ivity as  well  as  the  movements  which  these 
seem  to  prompt),  a  philosophy  of  pure  experi- 
ence can  consider  the  real  causation  as  no  other 
nature  of  thing  than  that  which  even  in  our 
most  erroneous  experiences  appears  to  be  at 
work.  Exactly  what  appears  there  is  what  we 
mean  by  working,  though  we  may  later  come 
to  learn  that  working  was  not  exactly  there. 
Sustaining,  persevering,  striving,  paying  with 
effort  as  we  go,  hanging  on,  and  finally  achiev- 
ing our  intention  —  this  is  action,  this  is  effect- 
uation in  the  only  shape  in  which,  by  a  pure 
experience-philosophy,  the  whereabouts  of  it 

183 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

anywhere  can  be  discussed.  Here  is  creation 
in  its  first  intention,  here  is  causality  at  work.1 
To  treat  this  offhand  as  the  bare  illusory  sur- 
face of  a  world  whose  real  causality  is  an  un- 
imaginable ontological  principle  hidden  in  the 
cubic  deeps,  is,  for  the  more  empirical  way  of 
thinking,  only  animism  in  another  shape.  You 
explain  your  given  fact  by  your  'principle,'  but 
the  principle  itself,  when  you  look  clearly  at  it, 
turns  out  to  be  nothing  but  a  previous  little 
spiritual  copy  of  the  fact.  Away  from  that  one 
and  only  kind  of  fact  your  mind,  considering 
causality,  can  never  get.2, 

1  Let  me  not  be  told  that  this  contradicts  [the  first  essay],  'Does 
Consciousness  Exist?'  (see  especially  page  32),  in  which  it  was  said 
that  while  'thoughts'  and  'things'  have  the  same  natures,  the  natures 
work  'energetically'  on  each  other  in  the  things  (fire  burns,  water 
wets,  etc.)  but  not  in  the  thoughts.  Mental  activity-trains  are  com- 
posed of  thoughts,  yet  their  members  do  work  on  each  other,  they 
check,  sustain,  and  introduce.  They  do  so  when  the  activity  is  merely 
associational  as  well  as  when  effort  is  there.  But,  and  this  is  my  reply, 
they  do  so  by  other  parts  of  their  nature  than  those  that  energize  phy- 
sically. One  thought  in  every  developed  activity-series  is  a  desire  or 
thought  of  purpose,  and  all  the  other  thoughts  acquire  a  feeling  tone 
from  their  relation  of  harmony  or  oppugnancy  to  this.  The  interplay 
of  these  secondary  tones  (among  which  'interest,'  'difficulty,'  and 
'effort'  figure)  runs  the  drama  in  the  mental  series.  In  what  we  term 
the  physical  drama  these  qualities  play  absolutely  no  part.  The 
subject  needs  careful  working  out;  but  I  can  see  no  inconsistency. 

2  I  have  found  myself  more  than  once  accused  in  print  of  being  the 
assertor  of  a  metaphysical  principle  of  activity.  Since  literary  misun- 
derstandings retard  the  settlement  of  problems,  I  should  like  to  say 

184 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

I  conclude,  then,  that  real  effectual  causation 
as  an  ultimate  nature,  as  a  'category,'  if  you 
like,  of  reality,  is  just  what  we  feel  it  to  be,  just 
that  kind  of  conjunction  which  our  own  activ- 
ity-series reveal.  We  have  the  whole  butt  and 
being  of  it  in  our  hands;  and  the  healthy  thing 


that  such  an  interpretation  of  the  pages  I  have  published  on  Effort 
and  on  Will  is  absolutely  foreign  to  what  I  meant  to  express.  [Principles 
of  Psychology,  vol.  n,  ch.  xxvr.]  I  owe  all  my  doctrines  on  this  sub- 
ject to  Renouvier;  and  Renouvier,  as  I  understand  him,  is  (or  at  any 
rate  then  was)  an  out  and  out  phenomenist,  a  denier  of  'forces'  in  the 
most  strenuous  sense.  [Cf.  Ch.  Renouvier:  Esquisse  d'une  Classifi- 
cation Systematique  des  Doctrines  Philosophiques  (1885),  vol.  II,  pp. 
390-392;  Essais  de  Critique  Gerdrale  (1859),  vol.  n,  §§  ix,  xiii.  For 
an  acknowledgment  of  the  author's  general  indebtedness  to  Re- 
nouvier, cf.  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  165,  note.  Ed.]  Single 
clauses  in  my  writing,  or  sentences  read  out  of  their  connection,  may 
possibly  have  been  compatible  with  a  transphenomenal  principle  of 
energy;  but  I  defy  anyone  to  show  a  single  sentence  which,  taken 
with  its  context,  should  be  naturally  held  to  advocate  that  view.  The 
misinterpretation  probably  arose  at  first  from  my  defending  (after 
Renouvier)  the  indeterminism  of  our  efforts.  'Free  will' was  supposed 
by  my  critics  to  involve  a  supernatural  agent.  As  a  matter  of  plain 
history  the  only  '  free  will '  I  have  ever  thought  of  defending  is  the 
character  of  novelty  in  fresh  activity-situations.  If  an  activity-pro- 
cess is  the  form  of  a  whole  'field  of  consciousness,'  and  if  each  field  of 
consciousness  is  not  only  in  its  totality  unique  (as  is  now  commonly 
admitted)  but  has  its  elements  unique  (since  in  that  situation  they 
are  all  dyed  in  the  total)  then  novelty  is  perpetually  entering  the 
world  and  what  happens  there  is  not  pure  repetition,  as  the  dogma 
of  the  literal  uniformity  of  nature  requires.  Activity-situations  come, 
in  short,  each  with  an  original  touch.  A  'principle'  of  free  will  if 
there  were  one,  would  doubtless  manifest  itself  in  such  phenomena, 
but  I  never  saw,  nor  do  I  now  see,  what  the  principle  could  do 
except  rehearse  the  phenomenon  beforehand,  or  why  it  ever  should 
be  invoked. 

185 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

for  philosophy  is  to  leave  off  grubbing  under- 
ground for  what  effects  effectuation,  or  what 
makes  action  act,  and  to  try  to  solve  the  con- 
crete questions  of  where  effectuation  in  this 
world  is  located,  of  which  things  are  the  true 
causal  agents  there,  and  of  what  the  more 
remote  effects  consist. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  greater  sublim- 
ity traditionally  attributed  to  the  metaphysi- 
cal inquiry,  the  grubbing  inquiry,  entirely  dis- 
appears. If  we  could  know  what  causation 
really  and  transcendentally  is  in  itself,  the  only 
use  of  the  knowledge  would  be  to  help  us  to 
recognize  an  actual  cause  when  we  had  one, 
and  so  to  track  the  future  course  of  opera- 
tions more  intelligently  out.  The  mere  ab- 
stract inquiry  into  causation's  hidden  nature 
is  not  more  sublime  than  any  other  inquiry 
equally  abstract.  Causation  inhabits  no  more 
sublime  level  than  anything  else.  It  lives, 
apparently,  in  the  dirt  of  the  world  as  well 
as  in  the  absolute,  or  in  man's  unconquerable 
mind.  The  wTorth  and  interest  of  the  world 

consists  not  in  its  elements,  be  these  elements 

186 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

things,  or  be  they  the  conjunctions  of  things; 
it  exists  rather  in  the  dramatic  outcome  in 
the  whole  process,  and  in  the  meaning  of  the 
succession  stages  which  the  elements  work  out. 
My  colleague  and  master,  Josiah  Royce,  in 
a  page  of  his  review  of  Stout's  Analytic  Psy- 
chology *  has  some  fine  words  on  this  point 
with  which  I  cordially  agree.  I  cannot  agree 
with  his  separating  the  notion  of  efficacy  from 
that  of  activity  altogether  (this  I  understand 
to  be  one  contention  of  his)  for  activities  are 
efficacious  whenever ^they  are  real  activities  at 
all.  But  the  inner  nature  both  of  efficacy  and 
of  activity  are  superficial  problems,  I  under- 
stand Royce  to  say;  and  the  only  point  for  us 
in  solving  them  would  be  their  possible  use  in 
helping  us  to  solve  the  far  deeper  problem  of 
the  course  and  meaning  of  the  world  of  life. 
Life,  says  our  colleague,  is  full  of  significance, 
of  meaning,  of  success  and  of  defeat,  of  hoping 
and  of  striving,  of  longing,  of  desire,  and  of 
inner  value.  It  is  a  total  presence  that  em- 
bodies worth.  To  live  our  own  lives  better  in 

1  Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  vi,  1897;  cf.  pp.  392-393. 
187 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

this  presence  is  the  true  reason  why  we  wish  to 
know  the  elements  of  things;  so  even  we  psy- 
chologists must  end  on  this  pragmatic  note. 

The  urgent  problems  of  activity  are  thus 
more  concrete.  They  are  all  problems  of  the 
true  relation  of  longer-span  to  shorter-span 
activities.  When,  for  example,  a  number  of 
'ideas'  (to  use  the  name  traditional  in  psy- 
chology) grow  confluent  in  a  larger  field  of 
consciousness,  do  the  smaller  activities  still 
co-exist  with  the  wider  activities  then  experi- 
enced by  the  conscious  subject  ?  And,  if  so, 
do  the  wide  activities  accompany  the  narrow 
ones  inertly,  or  do  they  exert  control  ?  Or  do 
they  perhaps  utterly  supplant  and  replace 
them  and  short-circuit  their  effects?  Again, 
when  a  mental  active-process  and  a  brain- 
cell  series  of  activities  both  terminate  in  the 
same  muscular  movement,  does  the  mental 
process  steer  the  neural  processes  or  not?  Or, 
on  the  other  hand,  does  it  independently  short- 
circuit  their  effects?  Such  are  the  questions 
that  wre  must  begin  with.  But  so  far  am  I  from 
suggesting  any  definitive  answer  to  such  ques- 

188 


THE  EXPERIENCE  OF  ACTIVITY 

tions,  that  I  hardly  yet  can  put  them  clearly. 
They  lead,  however,  into  that  region  of  pan- 
psychic  and  ontologic  speculation  of  which 
Professors  Bergson  and  Strong  have  lately  en- 
larged the  literature  in  so  able  and  interest- 
ing a  way.1  The  results  of  these  authors  seem 
in  many  respects  dissimilar,  and  I  understand 
them  as  yet  but  imperfectly;  but  I  cannot  help 
suspecting  that  the  direction  of  their  work  is 
very  promising,  and  that  they  have  the  hunt- 
er's instinct  for  the  fruitful  trails. 

1  [Cf.  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  Lect.  vi  (on  Bergson)  ;  H.  Bergson: 
Creative  Evolution,  trans,  by  A.  Mitchell;  C.  A. Strong:  Why  the  Mind 
has  a  Body,  ch.  xn.   Ed.] 


VII 

THE   ESSENCE   OF   HUMANISM1 

Humanism  is  a  ferment  that  has  'come  to 
stay.'  2  It  is  not  a  single  hypothesis  or  the- 
orem, and  it  dwells  on  no  new  facts.  It  is 
rather  a  slow  shifting  in  the  philosophic  per- 
spective, making  things  appear  as  from  a  new 
centre  of  interest  or  point  of  sight.  Some 
writers  are  strongly  conscious  of  the  shifting, 
others  half  unconscious,  even  though  their  own 
vision  may  have  undergone  much  change.  The 
result  is  no  small  confusion  in  debate,  the  half- 
conscious  humanists  often  taking  part  against 
the  radical  ones,  as  if  they  wished  to  count 
upon  the  other  side.3 

1  [Reprinted  from  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  II,  No.  5,  March  2,  1905.  Also  reprinted,  with 
slight  changes  in  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  121-135.  The  author's 
corrections  have  been  adopted  for  the  present  text.  Ed.] 

2  [Written  apropos  of  the  appearance  of  three  articles  in  Mind,  N.  S., 
vol.  xiv,  No.  53,  January,  1905:  "  '  Absolute '  and  '  Relative '  Truth," 
H.  H.  Joachim;  "Professor  James  on'  Humanism  and  Truth,' "  H.  W. 
B.  Joseph;  "Applied  Axioms,"  A.  Sidgwick.  Of  these  articles  the 
second  and  third  "continue  the  humanistic  (or  pragmatistic)  con- 
troversy," the  first  "deeply  connects  with  it."  Ed.] 

3  Professor  Baldwin,  for  example.  His  address  '  On  Selective  Think- 
ing' (Psychological  Review,  [vol.  v]»  1898,  reprinted  in  his  volume. 
Development  and  Evolution)  seems  to  me  an  unusually  well-written 

190 


I 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

If  humanism  really  be  the  name  for  such 
a  shifting  of  perspective,  it  is  obvious  that 
the  whole  scene  of  the  philosophic  stage  will 
change  in  some  degree  if  humanism  prevails. 
The  emphasis  of  things,  their  foreground  and 
background  distribution,  their  sizes  and  val- 
ues, will  not  keep  just  the  same.1  If  such 
pervasive  consequences  be  involved  in  human- 
ism, it  is  clear  that  no  pains  which  philoso- 
phers may  take,  first  in  defining  it,  and  then  in 
furthering,  checking,  or  steering  its  progress, 
will  be  thrown  away. 

It  suffers  badly  at  present  from  incomplete 
definition.  Its  most  systematic  advocates, 
Schiller  and  Dewey,  have  published  fragment- 
pragmatic  manifesto.  Nevertheless  in  'The  Limits  of  Pragmatism* 
(ibid.,  [vol.  xi],  1904),  he  (much  less  clearly)  joins  in  the  attack. 

1  The  ethical  changes,  it  seems  to  me,  are  beautifully  made  evident 
in  Professor  Dewey's  series  of  articles,  which  will  never  get  the  atten- 
tion they  deserve  till  they  are  printed  in  a  book.  I  mean:  'The 
Significance  of  Emotions,'  Psychological  Review,  vol.  n,  [1895],  p.  13; 
'The  Reflex  Arc  Concept  in  Psychology,'  ibid.,  vol.  in,  [1896],  p.  357; 
'Psychology  and  Social  Practice,'  ibid.,  vol.  vn,  [1900],  p.  105; 
'Interpretation  of  Savage  Mind,' ibid.,  vol.  ix,  [1902],  p.  217; 'Green's 
Theory  of  the  Moral  Motive,'  Philosophical  Review,  vol.  i,  [1892],  p. 
593;  'Self-realization  as  the  Moral  Ideal,'  ibid.,  vol.  n,  [1893],  p.  652; 
'The  Psychology  of  Effort,'  ibid.,  vol.  vi,  [1897],  p.  43;  'The  Evolu- 
tionary Method  as  Applied  to  Morality,'  ibid.,  vol.  xr,  [1902],  pp. 
107, 353;  'Evolution  and  Ethics,'  Monist,  vol.  vm,  [1898],  p.  321;  to 
mention  only  a  few. 

191 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ary  programs  only;  and  its  bearing  on  many 
vital  philosophic  problems  has  not  been  traced 
except  by  adversaries  who,  scenting  heresies  in 
advance,  have  showered  blows  on  doctrines  — 
subjectivism  and  scepticism,  for  example  — 
that  no  good  humanist  finds  it  necessary  to 
entertain.  By  their  still  greater  reticences,  the 
anti-humanists  have,  in  turn,  perplexed  the 
humanists.   Much  of  the  controversy  has  in- 
volved the  word  *  truth.'  It  is  always  good  in 
debate  to  know  your  adversary's  point  of  view 
authentically.    But  the  critics  of  humanism 
never  define  exactly  what  the  word  *  truth' 
signifies  when  they  use  it  themselves.    The 
humanists  have  to  guess  at  their  view;  and 
the  result  has  doubtless  been  much  beating  of 
the  air.  Add  to  all  this,  great  individual  differ- 
ences in  both  camps,  and  it  becomes  clear  that 
nothing  is  so  urgently  needed,  at  the  stage 
which  things  have  reached  at  present,  as  a 
sharper  definition  by  each  side  of  its  central 
point  of  view. 

Whoever    will    contribute    any    touch    of 

sharpness  will  help  us  to  make  sure  of  what 's 

192 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

what  and  who  is  who.  Anyone  can  contribute 
such  a  definition,  and,  without  it,  no  one 
knows  exactly  where  he  stands.  If  I  offer  my 
own  provisional  definition  of  humanism  *  now 
and  here,  others  may  improve  it,  some  adver- 
sary may  be  led  to  define  his  own  creed  more 
sharply  by  the  contrast,  and  a  certain  quicken- 
ing of  the  crystallization  of  general  opinion 
may  result. 

I 

The  essential  service  of  humanism,  as  I  con- 
ceive the  situation,  is  to  have  seen  that  though 
one  'part  of  our  experience  may  lean  upon  an- 
other part  to  make  it  what  it  is  in  any  one  of  sev- 
eral aspects  in  which  it  may  be  considered,  ex- 
perience as  a  whole  is  self-containing  and  leans 
on  nothing. 

Since  this  formula  also  expresses  the  main 
contention  of  transcendental  idealism,  it  needs 
abundant  explication  to  make  itlunambigu- 

1  [The  author  employs  the  term  'humanism'  either  as  a  synonym 
for  'radical  empiricism'  (cf.  e.g.,  above,  p.  156);  or  as  that  general 
philosophy  of  life  of  which  'radical  empiricism'  is  the  theoretical 
ground  (cf.  below,  p.  194).  For  other  discussions  of  'humanism,'  cf. 
below,  essay  xi,  and  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  essay  m.    Ed.] 

193 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ous.  It  seems,  at  first  sight,  to  confine  itself  to 
denying  theism  and  pantheism.  But,  in  fact, 
it  need  not  deny  either ;  everything  would 
depend  on  the  exegesis ;  and  if  the  formula 
ever  became  canonical,  it  would  certainly 
develop  both  right-wing  and  left-wing  inter- 
preters. I  myself  read  humanism  theistically 
and  pluralistically.  If  there  be  a  God,  he  is 
no  absolute  all-experiencer,  but  simply  the 
experiencer  of  widest  actual  conscious  span. 
Read  thus,  humanism  is  for  me  a  religion 
susceptible  of  reasoned  defence,  though  I  am 
well  aware  how  many  minds  there  are  to  whom 
it  can  appeal  religiously  only  when  it  has 
been  monistically  translated.  Ethically  the 
pluralistic  form  of  it  takes  for  me  a  stronger 
hold  on  reality  than  any  other  philosophy  I 
know  of  —  it  being  essentially  a  social  philo- 
sophy, a  philosophy  of  'co,'  in  which  con- 
junctions do  the  work.  But  my  primary  reason 
for  advocating  it  is  its  matchless  intellectual 
economy.  It  gets  rid,  not  only  of  the  stand- 
ing 'problems'  that  monism  engenders  ('pro- 
blem of  evil/  'problem  of  freedom,'  and  the 

194 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

like),  but  of  other  metaphysical  mysteries  and 
paradoxes  as  well. 

It  gets  rid,  for  example,  of  the  whole  agnostic 
controversy,  by  refusing  to  entertain  the  hypo- 
thesis of  trans-empirical  reality  at  all.  It  gets 
rid  of  any  need  for  an  absolute  of  the  Brad- 
leyan  type  (avowedly  sterile  for  intellectual 
purposes)  by  insisting  that  the  conjunctive 
relations  found  within  experience  are  fault- 
lessly real.  It  gets  rid  of  the  need  of  an  abso- 
lute of  the  Roycean  type  (similarly  sterile)  by 
its  pragmatic  treatment  of  the  problem  of 
knowledge  [a  treatment  of  which  I  have  al- 
ready given  a  version  in  two  very  inadequate 
articles].1  As  the  views  of  knowledge,  reality 
and  truth  imputed  to  humanism  have  been 
those  so  far  most  fiercely  attacked,  it  is  in 
regard  to  these  ideas  that  a  sharpening  of 
focus  seems  most  urgently  required.  I  proceed 
therefore  to  bring  the  views  which  I  impute 
to  humanism  in  these  respects  into  focus  as 
briefly  as  I  can. 

1  [Omitted  from  reprint  in  Meaning  of  Truth.  The  articles  re- 
ferred to  are  'Does  Consciousness  Exist?'  and  'A  World  of  Pure 
Experience,'  reprinted  above.] 

195 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 
II 

If  the  central  humanistic  thesis,  printed 
above  in  italics,  be  accepted,  it  will  follow 
that,  if  there  be  any  such  thing  at  all  as  know- 
ing, the  knower  and  the  object  known  must 
both  be  portions  of  experience.  One  part  of 
experience  must,  therefore,  either 

(1)  Know  another  part  of  experience  —  in 
other  words,  parts  must,  as  Professor  Wood- 
bridge  says,1  represent  one  another  instead  of 
representing  realities  outside  of  'conscious- 
ness '  —  this  case  is  that  of  conceptual  know- 
ledge; or  else 

(2)  They  must  simply  exist  as  so  many  ulti- 
mate thats  or  facts  of  being,  in  the  first  in- 
stance; and  then,  as  a  secondary  complication, 
and  without  doubling  up  its  entitative  single- 
ness, any  one  and  the  same  that  must  figure 
alternately  as  a  thing  known  and  as  a  know- 
ledge of  the  thing,  by  reason  of  two  divergent 
kinds  of  context  into  which,  in  the  general 
course  of  experience,  it  gets  woven.2  t 

1  In  Science,  November  4,  1904,  p.  599. 

8  This  statement  is  probably  excessively  obscure  to  any  one  who 

196 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

This  second  case  is  that  of  sense-perception. 
There  is  a  stage  of  thought  that  goes  beyond 
common  sense,  and  of  it  I  shall  say  more  pre- 
sently; but  the  common-sense  stage  is  a  per- 
fectly definite  [.halting-place  of  thought,  pri- 
marily for  purposes  of  action;  and,  so  long 
as  we  remain  on  the  common-sense  stage  of 
thought,  object  and  subject  fuse  in  the  fact  of 
*  presentation '  or  sense-perception  —  the  pen 
and  hand  which  I  now  see  writing,  for  example, 
are  the  physical  realities  which  those  words 
designate.  In  this  case  there  is  no  self-tran- 
scendency implied  in  the  knowing.  Human- 
ism, here,  is  only  a  more  comminuted  Identi- 
tatsphilosophie.1 

In  case  (1),  on  the  contrary,  the  represent- 
ative experience  does  transcend  itself  in  know- 
ing the  other  experience  that  is  its  object.  No 
one  can  talk  of  the  knowledge  of  the  one  by  the 
other  without  seeing  them  as  numerically  dis- 
tinct entities,  of  which  the  one  lies  beyond  the 
other  and  away  from  it,  along  some  direction 

has  not  read  my  two  articles,  'Does  Consciousness  Exist?'  and  'A 
World  of  Pure  Experience.' 
1  [Cf.  above,  p.  134;  and  below,  p.  202.] 

197 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

and  with  some  interval,  that  can  be  definitely 
named.  But,  if  the  talker  be  a  humanist,  he 
must  also  see  this  distance-interval  concretely 
and  pragmatically,  and  confess  it  to  consist 
of  other  intervening  experiences — of  possible 
ones,  at  all  events,  if  not  of  actual.  To  call  my 
present  idea  of  my  dog,  for  example,  cognitive 
of  the  real  dog  means  that,  as  the  actual  tissue 
of  experience  is  constituted,  the  idea  is  capable 
of  leading  into  a  chain  of  other  experiences 
on  my  part  that  go  from  next  to  next  and 
terminate  at  last  in  vivid  sense-perceptions 
of  a  jumping,  barking,  hairy  body.  Those  are 
the  real  dog,  the  dog's  full  presence,  for  my 
common  sense.  If  the  supposed  talker  is  a 
profound  philosopher,  although  they  may  not 
be  the  real  dog  for  him,  they  mean  the  real  dog, 
are  practical  substitutes  for  the  real  dog,  as 
the  representation  was  a  practical  substitute 
for  them,  that  real  dog  being  a  lot  of  atoms, 
say,  or  of  mind-stuff,  that  lie  where  the  sense- 
perceptions  lie  in  his  experience  as  well  as  in 
my  own. 


198 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

III 

The  philosopher  here  stands  for  the  stage  of 
thought  that  goes  beyond  the  stage  of  com- 
mon sense;  and  the  difference  is  simply  that  he 
'interpolates*  and  'extrapolates,'  where  com- 
mon sense  does  not.  For  common  sense,  two 
men  see  the  same  identical  real  dog.  Philo- 
sophy, noting  actual  differences  in  their  per- 
ceptions, points  out  the  duality  of  these  latter, 
and  interpolates  something  between  them  as 
a  more  real  terminus  —  first,  organs,  viscera, 
etc.;  next,  cells;  then,  ultimate  atoms;  lastly, 
mind-stuff  perhaps.  The  original  sense-term- 
ini of  the  two  men,  instead  of  coalescing  with 
each  other  and  with  the  real  dog-object,  as  at 
first  supposed,  are  thus  held  by  philosophers  to 
be  separated  by  invisible  realities  with  which, 
at  most,  they  are  conterminous. 

Abolish,  now,  one  of  the  percipients,  and 
the  interpolation  changes  into  'extrapolation.' 
The  sense-terminus  of  the  remaining  percipient 
is  regarded  by  the  philosopher  as  not  quite 
reaching  reality.  He  has  only  carried  the  pro- 
cession of  experiences,  the  philosopher  thinks, 

199 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

to  a  definite,  because  practical,  halting-place 
somewhere  on  the  way  towards  an  absolute 
truth  that  lies  beyond. 

The  humanist  sees  all  the  time,  however, 
that  there  is  no  absolute  transcendency  even 
about  the  more  absolute  realities  thus  con- 
jectured or  believed  in.  The  viscera  and  cells 
are  only  possible  percepts  following  upon  that 
of  the  outer  body.  The  atoms  again,  though 
we  may  never  attain  to  human  means  of  per- 
ceiving them,  are  still  defined  perceptually. 
The  mind-stuff  itself  is  conceived  as  a  kind 
of  experience;  and  it  is  possible  to  frame  the 
hypothesis  (such  hypotheses  can  by  no  logic 
be  excluded  from  philosophy)  of  two  knowers 
of  a  piece  of  mind-stuff  and  the  mind-stuff 
itself  becoming  'confluent'  at  the  moment  at 
which  our  imperfect  knowing  might  pass  into 
knowing  of  a  completed  type.  Even  so  do  you 
and  I  habitually  represent  our  two  perceptions 
and  the  real  dog  as  confluent,  though  only  pro- 
visionally, and  for  the  common-sense  stage 
of  thought.    If  my  pen  be  inwardly  made  of 

mind-stuff,  there  is  no  confluence  now  between 

200 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

that  mind-stuff  and  my  visual  perception  of 
the  pen.  But  conceivably  there  might  come  to 
be  such  confluence;  for,  in  the  case  of  my  hand, 
the  visual  sensations  and  the  inward  feelings 
of  the  hand,  its  mind-stuff,  so  to  speak,  are  even 
now  as  confluent  as  any  two  things  can  be. 

There  is,  thus,  no  breach  in  humanistic 
epistemology.  Whether  knowledge  be  taken 
as  ideally  perfected,  or  only  as  true  enough  to 
pass  muster  for  practice,  it  is  hung  on  one  con- 
tinuous scheme.  Reality,  howsoever  remote,  is 
always  defined  as  a  terminus  within  the  general 
possibilities  of  experience;  and  what  knows  it  is 
defined  as  an  experience  that  'represents*  it,  in 
the  sense  of  being  substitutable  for  it  in  our  think- 
ing because  it  leads  to  the  same  associates,  or 
in  the  sense  of  'pointing  to  W  through  a  chain 
of  other  experiences  that  either  intervene  or 
may  intervene. 

Absolute  reality  here  bears  the  same  relation 
to  sensation  as  sensation  bears  to  conception 
or  imagination.  Both  are  provisional  or  final 
termini,  sensation  being  only  the  terminus 
at  which  the  practical  man  habitually  stops, 

201 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

while  the  philosopher  projects  a  *  beyond'  in 
the  shape  of  more  absolute  reality.  These 
termini,  for  the  practical  and  the  philosophi- 
cal stages  of  thought  respectively,  are  self- 
supporting.  They  are  not  'true'  of  anything 
else,  they  simply  are,  are  real.  They  'lean 
on  nothing, '^as  my  italicized  formula  said. 
Rather  does  the  whole  fabric  of  experience 
lean  on  them,  just  as  the  whole  fabric  of  the 
solar  system,  including  many  relative  posi- 
tions, leans,  for  its  absolute  position  in  space, 
on  any  one  of  its  constituent  stars.  Here, 
again,  one  gets  a  new  Identitatsphilosophie  in 
pluralistic  form.1 

IV 

If  I  have  succeeded  in  making  this  at  all 
clear  (though  I  fear  that  brevity  and  abstract- 
ness  between  them  may  have  made  me  fail), 
the  reader  will  see  that  the  'truth'  of  our  men- 
tal operations  must  always  be  an  intra-experi- 
ential  affair.  A  conception  is  reckoned  true  by 
common  sense  when  it  can  be  made  to  lead  to  a 

1  [Cf.  above,  pp.  134,  197.] 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

sensation.  The  sensation,  which  for  common 
sense  is  not  so  much  'true'  as  'real,'  is  held  to 
be  provisionally  true  by  the  philosopher  just 
in  so  far  as  it  covers  (abuts  at,  or  occupies  the 
place  of)  a  still  more  absolutely  real  experi- 
ence, in  the  possibility  of  which  to  some  re- 
moter experient  the  philosopher  finds  reason 
to  believe. 

Meanwhile  what  actually  does  count  for  true 
to  any  individual  trower,  whether  he  be  philo- 
sopher or  common  man,  is  always  a  result  of  his 
apperceptions.  If  a  novel  experience,  concept- 
ual or  sensible,  contradict  too  emphatically  our 
pre-existent  system  of  beliefs,  in  ninety-nine 
cases  out  of  a  hundred  it  is  treated  as  false. 
Only  when  the  older  and  the  newer  experiences 
are  congruous  enough  to  mutually  apperceive 
and  modify  each  other,  does  what  we  treat  as 
an  advance  in  truth  result.  [Having  written  of 
this  point  in  an  article  in  reply  to  Mr.  Joseph's 
criticism  of  my  humanism,  I  will  say  no  more 
about  truth  here,  but  refer  the  reader  to  that 
review.1]    In  no  case,  however,  need    truth 

1  [Omitted  from  reprint  in  Meaning  of  Truth.    The  review  re- 
203 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

consist  in  a  relation  between  our  experiences 
and  something  archetypal  or  trans-experien- 
tial. Should  we  ever  reach  absolutely  terminal 
experiences,  experiences  in  which  we  all  agreed, 
which  were  superseded  by  no  revised  continu- 
ations, these  would  not  be  true,  they  would  be 
real,  they  would  simply  be,  and  be  indeed  the 
angles,  corners,  and  linchpins  of  all  reality,  on 
which  the  truth  of  everything  else  would  be 
stayed.  Only  such  other  things  as  led  to  these 
by  satisfactory  conjunctions  would  be  'true.' 
Satisfactory  connection  of  some  sort  with  such 
termini  is  all  that  the  word  'truth'  means. 
On  the  common-sense  stage  of  thought  sense- 
presentations  serve  as  such  termini.  Our  ideas 
and  concepts  and  scientific  theories  pass  for 
true  only  so  far  as  they  harmoniously  lead  back 
to  the  world  of  sense. 

I  hope  that  many  humanists  will  endorse 
this  attempt  of  mine  to  trace  the  more  essen- 
tial features  of  that  way  of  viewing  things.  I 
feel  almost  certain  that  Messrs.  Dewey  and 


ferred  to  is  reprinted  below,  pp.  244-265,  under  the  title  "Human- 
ism and  Truth  Once  More."    Ed.] 

204 


THE  ESSENCE  OF  HUMANISM 

Schiller  will  do  so.  If  the  attackers  will  also 
take  some  slight  account  of  it,  it  may  be  that 
discussion  will  be  a  little  less  wide  of  the  mark 
than  it  has  hitherto  been. 


VIII 

LA  NOTION  DE   CONSCIENCE1 

Je  voudrais  vous  communiquer  quelques 
doutes  qui  me  sont  venus  au  sujet  de  la  notion 
de  Conscience  qui  regne  dans  tous  nos  traites 
de  psychologic 

On  definit  habituellement  la  Psychologie 
comme  la  Science  des  faits  de  Conscience,  ou 
des  phenomenes,  ou  encore  des  Stats  de  la  Con- 
science. Qu'on  admette  qu'elle  se  rattache  a 
des  moi  personnels,  ou  bien  qu'on  la  croie  im- 
personnelle  a  la  faQon  du  "moi  transcendental" 
de  Kant,  de  la  Bewusstheit  ou  du  Bewusstsein 
iiberhaupt  de  nos  contemporains  en  Allemagne, 
cette  conscience  est  tou jours  regardee  comme 
possedant  une  essence  propre,  absolument 
distincte  de  l'essence  des  choses  materielles, 
qu'elle  a  le  don  mysterieux  de  representer  et  de 

1  [A  communication  made  (in  French)  at  the  Fifth  International 
Congress  of  Psychology,  in  Rome,  April  30,  1905.  It  is  reprinted  from 
the  Archives  de  Psychologie,  vol.  v,  No.  17,  June,  1905.]  Cette  commu- 
nication est  le  resume,  forcement  tres  condense,  de  vues  que  1'auteur  a 
exposees,  au  cours  de  ces  derniers  mois,  en  une  serie  d'articles  publies 
dans  le  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods, 
190-1  et  1905.  [The  series  of  articles  referred  to  is  reprinted  above.  Ed.] 

206 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

connaitre.  Les  faits  materiels,  pris  dans  leur 
materiality,  ne  sont  pas  eprouves,  ne  sont  pas 
objets  <¥  experience,  ne  se  rapportent  pas.  Pour 
qu'ils  prennent  la  forme  du  systeme  dans  lequel 
nous  nous  sentons  vivre,  il  faut  qu'ils  apparais- 
sent,  et  ce  fait  d'apparattre,  surajoute  a  leur 
existence  brute,  s'appelle  la  conscience  que 
nous  en  avons,  ou  peut-etre,  selon  l'hypothese 
panpsychiste,  qu'ils  ont  d'eux-memes. 

Voila  ce  dualisme  invetere  qu'il  semble  im- 
possible de  chasser  de  notre  vue  du  monde.  Ce 
monde  peut  bien  exister  en  soi,  mais  nous 
n'en  savons  rien,  car  pour  nous  il  est  exclusive- 
ment  un  objet  d'experience;  et  la  condition 
indispensable  a  cet  effet,  c'est  qu'il  soit  rap- 
porte  a  des  temoins,  qu'il  soit  connu  par  un 
sujet  ou  par  des  sujets  spirituels.  Objet  et 
sujet,  voila  les  deux  jambes  sans  lesquelles  il 
semble  que  la  philosophic  ne  saurait  faire  un 
pas  en  avant. 

Toutes  les  ecoles  sont  d'accord  la-dessus, 
scolastique,  cartesianisme,  kantisme,  neo-kan- 
tisme,  tous  admettent  le  dualisme  fondamen- 
tal.    Le  positivisme  ou  agnosticisme  de  nos 

207 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

jours,  qui  se  pique  de  relever  des  sciences 
naturelles,  se  donne  volontiers,  il  est  vrai,  le 
nom  de  monisme.  Mais  ce  n'est  qu'un  mo- 
nisme  verbal.  II  pose  une  realite  inconnue, 
mais  nous  dit  que  cette  realite  se  presente  tou- 
jours  sous  deux  "aspects,"  un  cote  conscience 
et  un  cote  matiere,  et  ces  deux  cotes  demeu- 
rent  aussi  irreductibles  que  les  attributs  fon- 
damentaux,  etendue  et  pensee,  du  Dieu  de 
Spinoza.  Au  fond,  le  monisme  contemporain 
est  du  spinozisme  pur. 

Or,  comment  se  represente-t-on  cette  con- 
science dont  nous  sommes  tous  si  portes  a 
admettre  l'existence?  Impossible  de  la  definir, 
nous  dit-on,  mais  nous  en  avons  tous  une  in- 
tuition immediate :  tout  d'abord  la  conscience  a 
conscience  d'elle-meme.  Demandez  a,  la  pre- 
miere personne  que  vous  rencontrerez,  homme 
ou  femme,  psychologue  ou  ignorant,  et  elle 
vous  repondra  qu'elle  se  sent  penser,  jouir, 
souffrir,  vouloir,  tout  comme  elle  se  sent  re- 
spirer.  Elle  pergoit  directement  sa  vie  spirit- 
uelle  comme  une  espece  de  courant  interieur, 
actif ,  leger,  fluide,  delicat,  diaphane  pour  ainsi 

208 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

dire,  et  absolument  oppose  a  quoi  que  ce  soit 
de  materiel.  Bref,  la  vie  subjective  ne  parait 
pas  seulement  &tre  une  condition  logiquement 
indispensable  pour  qu'il  y  ait  un  monde  ob- 
jectif  qui  apparaisse,  c'est  encore  un  element 
de  l'experience  meme  que  nous  eprouvons  di- 
rectement,  au  meme  titre  que  nous  eprouvons 
notre  propre  corps. 

Idees  et  Choses,  comment  done  ne  pas  recon- 
naitre  leur  dualisme?  Sentiments  et  Ob  jets, 
comment  douter  de  leur  heterogeneite  absolue? 

La  psychologie  soi-disant  scientifique  admet 
cette  heterogeneite  comme  rancienne  psycho- 
logie spiritualiste  Tadmettait.  Comment  ne  pas 
l'admettre?  Chaque  science  decoupe  arbitraire- 
ment  dans  la  trame  des  f aits  un  champ  ou  elle 
se  parque,  et  dont  elle  decrit  et  etudie  le  con- 
tenu.  La  psychologie  prend  justement  pour 
son  domaine  le  champ  des  faits  de  conscience. 
Elle  les  postule  sans  les  critiquer,  elle  les  oppose 
aux  faits  materiels;  et  sans  critiquer  non  plus 
la  notion  de  ces  derniers,  elle  les  rattache  a 
la  conscience  par  le  lien  mysterieux  de  la  con- 
naissance,  de  Yaperception  qui,  pour  elle,  est 

209 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

un  troisieme  genre  de  fait  fondamental  et 
ultime.  En  suivant  cette  voie,  la  psychologie 
contemporaine  a  fete  de  grands  triomphes. 
Elle  a  pu  faire  une  esquisse  de  revolution  de 
la  vie  consciente,  en  concevant  cette  derniere 
comme  s'adaptant  de  plus  en  plus  complete- 
ment  au  milieu  physique  environnant.  Elle 
a  pu  etablir  un  parallelisme  dans  le  dualisme, 
celui  des  faits  psychiques  et  des  evenements 
cerebraux.  Elle  a  explique  les  illusions,  les 
hallucinations,  et  jusqu'a  un  certain  point,  les 
maladies  mentales.  Ce  sont  de  beaux  progres; 
mais  il  reste  encore  bien  des  problemes.  La 
philosophic  generale  surtout,  qui  a  pour  devoir 
de  scruter  tous  les  postulats,  trouve  des  para- 
doxes et  des  empechements  la  ou  la  science 
passe  outre;  et  il  n'y  a  que  les  amateurs  de 
science  populaire  qui  ne  sont  jamais  perplexes. 
Plus  on  va  au  fond  des  choses,  plus  on  trouve 
d'enigmes;  et  j'avoue  pour  ma  part  que  depuis 
que  je  m'occupe  serieusement  de  psychologie, 
ce  vieux  dualisme  de  matiere  et  de  pensee, 
cette  heterogeneite  posee  comme  absolue  des 
deux  essences,  m'a  toujours  presente  des  diffi- 

210 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

cultes.  C'est  de  quelques-unes  de  ces  difficul- 
ties que  je  voudrais  maintenant  vous  entretenir. 
D'abord  il  y  en  a  une,  laquelle,  j'en  suis 
convaincu,  vous  aura  frappes  tous.  Prenons  la 
perception  exterieure,  la  sensation  directe  que 
nous  donnent  par  exemple  les  murs  de  cette 
salle.  Peut-on  dire  ici  que  le  psychique  et  le 
physique  sont  absolument  heterogenes?  Au 
contraire,  ils  sont  si  peu  heterogenes  que  si 
nous  nous  plagons  au  point  de  vue  du  sens 
commun;  si  nous  faisons  abstraction  de  toutes 
les  inventions  explicatives,  des  molecules  et  des 
ondulations  etherees,  par  exemple,  qui  au  fond 
sont  des  entites  metaphysiques ;  si,  en  un  mot, 
nous  prenons  la  realite  na'ivement  et  telle 
qu'elle  nous  est  donnee  tout  d'abord,  cette 
realite  sensible  d'ou  dependent  nos  interets 
vitaux,  et  sur  laquelle  se  portent  toutes  nos 
actions;  eh  bien,  cette  realite  sensible  et  la 
sensation  que  nous  en  avons  sont,  au  moment 
ou  la  sensation  se  produit,  absolument  iden- 
tiques  Tune  a  l'autre.  La  realite  est  l'apercep- 
tion  meme.  Les  mots  "murs  de  cette  salle"  ne 

signifient  que  cette  blancheur  fralche  et  sonore 

211 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

qui  nous  entoure,  coupee  par  ces  fenetres, 
bornee  par  ces  lignes  et  ces  angles.  Le  physique 
ici  n'a  pas  d'autre  contenu  que  le  psychique. 
Le  sujet  et  l'objet  se  confondent. 

C'est  Berkeley  qui  le  premier  a  mis  cette 
verite  en  honneur.  Esse  est  per  dpi.  Nos  sen- 
sations ne  sont  pas  de  petits  duplicats  in- 
terieurs  des  choses,  elles  sont  les  choses  memes 
en  tant  que  les  choses  nous  sont  presentes.  Et 
quoi  que  Ton  veuille  penser  de  la  vie  absente, 
cachee,  et  pour  ainsi  dire  privee,  des  choses,  et 
quelles  que  soient  les  constructions  hypothe- 
tiques  qu'on  en  fasse,  il  reste  vrai  que  la  vie 
publique  des  choses,  cette  actualite  presente 
par  laquelle  elles  nous  confrontent,  d'ou  deri- 
vent  toutes  nos  constructions  theoriques,  et 
a  laquelle  elles  doivent  toutes  revenir  et  se 
rattacher  sous  peine  de  flotter  dans  l'air  et 
dans  Pirreel;  cette  actualite,  dis-je,  est  homo- 
gene,  et  non  pas  seulement  homogene,  mais 
numeriquement  une,  avec  une  certaine  partie 
de  notre  vie  interieure. 

Voila  pour  la  perception  exterieure.  Quand 
on  s'adresse  a  l'imagination,  a  la  memoire  ou 

212 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

aux  facultes  de  representation  abstraite,  bien 
que  les  faits  soient  ici  beaucoup  plus  compli- 
ques,  je  crois  que  la  meme  homogeneite  essen- 
tielle  se  degage.  Pour  simplifier  le  probleme, 
excluons  d'abord  toute  realite  sensible.  Pre- 
nons  la  pensee  pure,  telle  qu'elle  s'effectue  dans 
le  reve  ou  la  reverie,  ou  dans  la  memoire  du 
passe.  Ici  encore,  l'etoffe  de  l'experience  ne 
fait-elle  pas  double  emploi,  le  physique  et  le 
psychique  ne  se  confondent-ils  pas?  Si  je  reve 
d'une  montagne  d'or,  elle  n'existe  sans  doute 
pas  en  dehors  du  reve,  mais  dans  le  reve  elle  est 
de  nature  ou  d'essence  parfaitement  physique, 
c'est  comme  physique  qu'elle  m'apparait.  Si  en 
ce  moment  je  me  permets  de  me  souvenir  de 
ma  maison  en  Amerique,  et  des  details  de  mon 
embarquement  recent  pour  l'ltalie,  le  pheno- 
menepur,  lefait  qui  seproduit,  qu'est-il?  C'est, 
dit-on,  ma  pensee,  avec  son  contenu.  Mais  en- 
core ce  contenu,  qu'est-il?  II  porte  la  forme 
d'une  partie  du  monde  reel,  partie  distante,  il 
est  vrai,  de  six  mille  kilometres  d'espace  et  de 
six  semaines  de  temps,  mais  reliee  a  la  salle  ou 
nous  sommes  par  une  foule  de  choses,  objets 

213 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

et  evenements,  homogenes  d'une  part  avec  la 
salle  et  d'autre  part  avec  l'objet  de  mes  sou- 
venirs. 

Ce  contenu  ne  se  donne  pas  comme  etant 
d'abord  un  tout  petit  fait  interieur  que  je 
projetterais  ensuite  au  loin,  il  se  presente  d'em- 
blee  comme  le  fait  eloigne  meme.  Et  Facte  de 
penser  ce  contenu,  la  conscience  que  j'en  ai, 
que  sont-ils?  Sont-ce  au  fond  autre  chose  que 
des  manieres  retrospectives  de  nommer  le 
contenu  lui-meme,  lorsqu'on  l'aura  separe  de 
tous  ces  intermediates  physiques,  et  relie  a 
un  nouveau  groupe  d'associes  qui  le  font  ren- 
trer  dans  ma  vie  mentale,  les  emotions  par 
exemple  qu'il  a  eveillees  en  moi,  l'attention 
que  j'y  porte,  mes  idees  de  tout  a  l'heure  qui 
Font  suscite  comme  souvenir?  Ce  n'est  qu'en 
se  rapportant  a  ces  derniers  associes  que  le 
phenomene  arrive  a  etre  classe  comme  peiisee; 
tant  qu'il  ne  se  rapporte  qu'aux  premiers  il 
demeure  phenomene  objectif. 

II  est  vrai  que  nous  opposons  habituelle- 
ment  nos  images  interieures  aux  objets,  et  que 
nous  les  considerons  comme  de  petites  copies, 

214 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

comme  des  caiques  ou  doubles,  affaiblis,  de  ces 
derniers.  C'est  qu'un  objet  present  a  une 
vivacite  et  une  nettete  superieures  a  celles  de 
l'image.  II  lui  fait  ainsi  contraste;  et  pour 
me  servir  de  l'excellent  mot  de  Taine,  il  lui 
sert  de  reducteur.  Quand  les  deux  sont  pre- 
sents ensemble,  Fob  jet  prend  le  premier  plan 
et  l'image  "recule,"  devient  une  chose  "ab- 
sente."  Mais  cet  objet  present,  qu'est-il  en 
lui-meme?  De  quelle  etoffe  est-il  fait?  De  la 
meme  etoffe  que  l'image.  II  est  fait  de  sensa- 
tions; il  est  chose  pergue.  Son  esse  est  yerci'pi, 
et  lui  et  l'image  sont  generiquement  homogenes. 
Si  je  pense  en  ce  moment  a  mon  chapeau  que 
j'ai  laisse  tout  a  l'heure  au  vestiaire,  ou  est 
le  dualisme,  le  discontinu,  entre  le  chapeau 
pense  et  le  chapeau  reel  ?  C'est  d'un  vrai 
chapeau  absent  que  mon  esprit  s'occupe.  J'en 
tiens  compte  pratiquement  comme  d'une 
realite.  S'il  etait  present  sur  cette  table,  le 
chapeau  determinerait  un  mouvement  de  ma 
main:  je  l'enleverais.  De  meme  ce  chapeau 
conQu,  ce  chapeau  en  idee,  determinera  tan- 
tot  la  direction  de  mes  pas.  J'irai  le  prendre. 

215 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

L'idee  que  j'en  ai  se  continuera  jusqu'a  la 
presence  sensible  du  chapeau,  et  s'y  fondra 
harmonieusement. 

Je  conclus  done  que,  —  bien  qu'il  y  ait  un 
dualisme  pratique  —  puisque  les  images  se 
distinguent  des  objets,  en  tiennent  lieu,  et 
nous  y  menent,  il  n'y  a  pas  lieu  de  leur  at- 
tribuer  une  difference  de  nature  essentielle. 
Pensee  et  actualite  sont  faites  d'une  seule  et 
meme  etoffe,  qui  est  l'etoffe  de  l'experience  en 
general. 

La  psychologie  de  la  perception  exterieure 
nous  mene  a  la  meme  conclusion.  Quand 
j'apergois  l'objet  devant  moi  comme  une  table 
de  telle  forme,  a-  telle  distance,  on  m'explique 
que  ce  fait  est  du  a  deux  facteurs,  a  une  ma- 
tiere  de  sensation  qui  me  penetre  par  la  voie 
des  yeux  et  qui  donne  l'element  d'exteriorite 
reelle,  et  a  des  idees  qui  se  reveillent,  vont  a, 
la  rencontre  de  cette  realite,  la  classent  et 
l'interpretent.  Mais  qui  peut  faire  la  part, 
dans  la  table  concretement  apergue,  de  ce  qui 
est  sensation  et  de  ce  qui  est  idee?  L'externe  et 
l'interne,  1'etendu  et  l'inetendu,  se  fusionnent 

216 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

et  font  un  mariage  indissoluble.  Cela  rappelle 
ces  panoramas  circulaires,  ou  des  objets  reels, 
rochers,  herbe,  chariots  brises,  etc.,  qui  occu- 
pent  l'avant-plan,  sont  si  ingenieusement  re- 
lies a  la  toile  qui  fait  le  fond,  et  qui  repre- 
sente  une  bataille  ou  un  vaste  paysage,  que 
Ton  ne  sait  plus  distinguer  ce  qui  est  objet  de 
ce  qui  est  peinture.  Les  coutures  et  les  joints 
sont  imperceptibles. 

Cela  pourrait-il  advenir  si  l'objet  et  l'idee 
etaient  absolument  dissemblables  de  nature? 

Je  suis  convaincu  que  des  considerations 
pareilles  a  celles  que  je  viens  d'exprimer  au- 
ront  deja  suscite,  chez  vous  aussi,  des  doutes 
au  sujet  du  dualisme  pretendu. 

Et   d'autres   raisons   de   douter   surgissent 

encore.   II  y  a  toute  une  sphere  d'adjectifs  et 

d'attributs  qui  ne  sont  ni  objectifs,  ni  sub- 

jectifs  d'une  maniere  exclusive,  mais  que  nous 

employons   tantot   d'une  maniere   et   tantot 

d'une  autre,  comme  si  nous  nous  complaisions 

dans  leur  ambiguite.    Je  parle  des   qualites 

que  nous  apprecions,  pour  ainsi  dire,  dans  les 

217 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

choses,  leur  cote  esthetique,  moral,  leur  valeur 
pour  nous.  La  beaute,  par  cxemple,  ou  reside- 
t-elle?  Est-elle  dans  la  statue,  dans  la  sonate, 
ou  dans  notre  esprit?  Mon  collegue  a  Har- 
vard, George  Santayana,  a  ecrit  un  livre  d'es- 
thetique,1  oii  il  appelle  la  beaute  "le  plaisir 
objectifie";  et  en  verite,  c'est  bien  ici  qu'on 
pourrait  parler  de  projection  au  dehors.  On 
dit  indifferemment  une  chaleur  agreable,  ou 
une  sensation  agreable  de  chaleur.  La  rarete, 
le  precieux  du  diamant  nous  en  paraissent  des 
qualites  essentielles.  Nous  parlons  d'un  orage 
affreux,  d'un  homme  haissable,  d'une  action 
indigne,  et  nous  croyons  parler  objectivement, 
bien  que  ces  termes  n'expriment  que  des 
rapports  a  notre  sensibilite  emotive  propre. 
Nous  disons  meme  un  chemin  penible,  un  ciel 
triste,  un  coucher  de  soleil  superbe.  Toute 
cette  maniere  animiste  de  regarder  les  choses 
qui  parait  avoir  ete  la  fagon  primitive  de  pen- 
ser  des  hommes,  peut  tres  bien  s'expliquer  (et 
M.  Santayana,  dans  un  autre  livre  tout  recent,2 

1  The  Sense  of  Beauty,  pp.  44  ff. 

2  The  Life  of  Reason  [vol.  i,  "Reason  in  Common  Sense,"  p.  Hi], 

218 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

l'a  bien  expliquee  ainsi)  par  l'habitude  d'attri- 
buer  a,  l'objet  tout  ce  que  nous  ressentons  en  sa 
presence.  Le  partage  du  subjectif  et  de  l'ob- 
jectif  est  le  fait  d'une  reflexion  tres  avancee, 
que  nous  aimons  encore  ajourner  dans  beau- 
coup  d'endroits.  Quand  les  besoins  pratiques 
ne  nous  en  tirent  pas  forcement,  il  semble  que 
nous  aimons  a,  nous  bercer  dans  le  vague. 

Les  qualites  secondes  elles-memes,  chaleur, 
son,  lumiere,  n'ont  encore  aujourd'hui  qu'une 
attribution  vague.  Pour  le  sens  commun,  pour 
la  vie  pratique,  elles  sont  absolument  objec- 
tives, physiques.  Pour  le  physicien,  elles  sont 
subjectives.  Pour  lui,  il  n'y  a  que  la  forme, 
la  masse,  le  mouvement,  qui  aient  une  realite 
exterieure.  Pour  le  philosophe  idealiste,  au 
contraire,  forme  et  mouvement  sont  tout  aussi 
subjectifs  que  lumiere  et  chaleur,  et  il  n'y  a 
que  la  chose-en-soi  inconnue,  le  "noumene," 
qui  jouisse  d'une  realite  extramentale  com- 
plete. 

Nos  sensations  intimes  conservent  encore  de 
cette  ambigu'ite.  II  y  a  des  illusions  de  mouve- 
ment qui  prouvent  que  nos  premieres  sen- 

219 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

sations  de  mouvement  etaient  generalisees. 
C'est  le  monde  entier,  avec  nous,  qui  se  mou- 
vait.  Maintenant  nous  distinguons  notre  pro- 
pre  mouvement  de  celui  des  objets  qui  nous 
entourent,  et  parmi  les  objets  nous  en  dis- 
tinguons qui  demeurent  en  repos.  Mais  il  est 
des  etats  de  vertige  ou  nous  retombons  encore 
aujourd'hui  dans  l'indifferenciation  premiere. 
Vous  connaissez  tous  sans  doute  cette  the- 
orie  qui  a  voulu  faire  des  emotions  des  sommes 
de  sensations  viscerales  et  musculaires.  Elle  a 
donne  lieu  a  bien  des  controverses,  et  aucune 
opinion  n'a  encore  conquis  l'unanimite  des 
suffrages.  Vous  connaissez  aussi  les  contro- 
verses sur  la  nature  de  Pactivite  mentale.  Les 
uns  soutiennent  qu'elle  est  une  force  purement 
spirituelle  que  nous  sommes  en  etat  d'aperce- 
voir  immediatement  comme  telle.  Les  autres 
pretendent  que  ce  que  nous  nommons  activite 
mentale  (effort,  attention,  par  exemple)  n'est 
que  le  reflet  senti  de  certains  effets  dont  notre 
organisme  est  le  siege,  tensions  musculaires  au 
crane  et  au  gosier,  arret  ou  passage  de  la 
respiration,  afflux  de  sang,  etc. 

220 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

De  quelque  maniere  que  se  resolvent  ces  con- 
troverses,  leur  existence  prouve  bien  clairement 
une  chose,  c'est  qu'il  est  tres  difficile,  ou  meme 
absolument  impossible  de  savoir,  par  la  seule 
inspection  intime  de  certains  phenomenes,  s'ils 
sont  de  nature  physique,  occupant  de  Tetendue, 
etc.,  ou  s'ils  sont  de  nature  purement  psychique 
et  interieure.  II  nous  faut  toujours  trouver  des 
raisons  pour  appuyer  notre  avis;  il  nous  faut 
chercher  la  classification  la  plus  probable  du 
phenomene;  et  en  fin  decompte  il  pourrait  bien 
se  trouver  que  toutes  nos  classifications  usuelles 
eussent  eu  leurs  motifs  plutot  dans  les  besoins 
de  la  pratique  que  dans  quelque  faculte  que 
nous  aurions  d'apercevoir  deux  essences  ul- 
times  et  diverses  qui  composeraient  ensemble  la 
trame  des  choses.  Le  corps  de  chacun  de  nous 
offre  un  contraste  pratique  presque  violent  a 
tout  le  reste  du  milieu  ambiant.  Tout  ce  qui 
arrive  au  dedans  de  ce  corps  nous  est  plus  in- 
time  et  important  que  ce  qui  arrive  ailleurs.  II 
s'identifie  avec  notre  moi,  il  se  classe  avec  lui. 
Ame,  vie,  souffle,  qui  saurait  bien  les  dis- 
tinguer  exactement?  Meme  nos  images  et  nos 

221 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

souvenirs,  qui  n'agissent  sur  le  monde  physique 
que  par  le  moyen  de  notre  corps,  semblent  ap- 
partenir  a  ce  dernier.  Nous  les.traitons  comme 
internes,  nous  les  classons  avec  nos  sentiments 
affectifs.  II  faut  bien  avouer,  en  somme,  que 
la  question  du  dualisme  de  la  pensee  et  de  la 
matiere  est  bien  loin  d'etre  finalement  resolue. 

Et  voila  terminee  la  premiere  partie  de  mon 
discours.  J'ai  voulu  vous  penetrer,  Mesdames 
et  Messieurs,  de  mes  doutes  et  de  la  realite, 
aussi  bien  que  de  l'importance,  du  probleme. 

Quant  a  moi,  apres  de  longues  annees  d'hesi- 
tation,  j'ai  flni  par  prendre  mon  parti  carre- 
ment.  Je  crois  que  la  conscience,  telle  qu'on  se 
la  represente  communement,  soit  comme  en- 
tite,  soit  comme  activite  pure,  mais  en  tout 
cas  comme  fluide,  inetendue,  diaphane,  vide 
de  tout  contenu  propre,  mais  se  connaissant 
directement  elle-meme,  spirituelle  enfin,  je 
crois,  dis-je,  que  cette  conscience  est  une  pure 
chimere,  et  que  la  somme  de  realites  concretes 
que  le  mot  conscience  devrait  couvrir,  merite 
une  toute  autre  description,  description,  du 

reste,  qu'une  philosophic  attentive  aux  faits  et 

222 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

sachant  faire  un  peu  d'analyse,  serait  desor- 
mais  en  etat  de  f ournir  ou  plutot  de  commencer 
a  fournir.  Et  ces  mots  m'amenent  a  la  seconde 
partie  de  mon  discours.  Elle  sera  beaucoup 
plus  courte  que  la  premiere,  parce  que  si  je  la 
developpais  sur  la  meme  echelle,  elle  serait 
beaucoup  trop  longue.  II  f  aut,  par  consequent, 
que  je  me  restreigne  aux  seules  indications 
indispensables. 

Admettons  que  la  conscience,  la  Bewusstheit, 
congue  comme  essence,  entite,  activite,  moitie 
irreductible  de  chaque  experience,  soit  sup- 
primee,  que  le  dualisme  fondamental  et  pour 
ainsi  dire  ontologique  soit  aboli  et  que  ce  que 
nous  supposions  exister  soit  seulement  ce  qu'on 
a  appele  jusqu'ici  le  contenu,  le  Inhalt,  de  la 
conscience;  comment  la  philosophic  va-t-elle  se 
tirer  d'affaire  avec  l'espece  de  monisme  vague 
qui  en  resultera  ?  Je  vais  tacher  de  vous  insinuer 
quelques  suggestions  positives  la-dessus,  bien 
que  je  craigne  que,  faute  du  developpement 
necessaire,  mes  idees  ne  repandront  pas  une 
clarte  tres  grande.    Pourvu  que  j'indique  un 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

commencement  de  sentier,  ce  sera  peut-etre 
assez. 

Au  fond,  pourquoi  nous  accrochons-nous 
d'une  maniere  si  tenace  a  cette  idee  d'une  con- 
science surajoutee  a  l'existence  du  contenu  des 
choses?  Pourquoi  la  reclamons-nous  si  forte- 
ment,  que  celui  qui  la  nierait  nous  semblerait 
plut6t  un  mauvais  plaisant  qu'un  penseur? 
N'est-ce  pas  pour  sauver  ce  fait  indeniable  que 
le  contenu  de  l'experience  n'a  pas  seulement 
une  existence  propre  et  comme  immanente  et 
intrinseque,  mais  que  chaque  partie  de  ce  con- 
tenu deteint  pour  ainsi  dire  sur  ses  voisines, 
rend  compte  d'elle-meme  a  d'autres,  sort  en 
quelque  sorte  de  soi  pour  £tre  sue  et  qu'ainsi 
tout  le  champ  de  l'experience  se  trouve  etre 
transparent  de  part  en  part,  ou  constitue 
comme  un  espace  qui  serait  rempli  de  miroirs? 

Cette  bilateralite  des  parties  de  l'experience, 
—  a  savoir  d'une  part,  qu'elles  sont  avec  des 
qualites  propres;  d'autre  part,  qu'elles  sont 
rapportees  a  d'autres  parties  et  sues  —  l'opin- 
ion  regnante  la  constate  et  l'explique  par  un 

dualisme  fondamental  de  constitution  apparte- 

224 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

nant  a  chaque  morceau  d'experience  en  propre. 
Dans  cette  feuille  de  papier  il  n'y  a  pas  seule- 
ment,  dit-on,  le  contenu,  blancheur,  minceur, 
etc.,  mais  il  y  a  ce  second  fait  de  la  conscience 
de  cette  blancheur  et  de  cette  minceur.  Cette 
fonction  d'etre  "rapporte,"  de  faire  partie  de  la 
trame  entiere  d'une  experience  plus  compre- 
hensive, on  l'erige  en  fait  ontologique,  et  on 
loge  ce  fait  dans  l'interieur  meme  du  papier,  en 
l'accouplant  a  sa  blancheur  et  a  sa  minceur. 
Ce  n'est  pas  un  rapport  extrinseque  qu'on 
suppose,  c'est  une  moitie  du  phenomene  meme. 
Je  crois  qu'en  somme  on  se  represente  la 
realite  comme  constitute  de  la  fagon  dont  sont 
faites  les  "couleurs"  qui  nous  servent  a  la 
peinture.  II  y  a  d'abord  des  matieres  coloran- 
tes  qui  repondent  au  contenu,  et  il  y  a  un  ve- 
hicule,  huile  ou  colle,  qui  les  tient  en  suspen- 
sion et  qui  repond  a  la  conscience.  C'est  un 
dualisme  complet,  ou,  en  employant  certains 
procedes,  on  peut  separer  chaque  element  de 
l'autre  par  voie  de  soustraction.  C'est  ainsi 
qu'on  nous  assure  qu'en  faisant  un  grand  effort 
d'abstraction  introspective,  nous  pouvons  sai- 

225 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

sir  notre  conscience  sur  le  vif,  comme  une 
activite  spirituelle  pure,  en  negligeant  a  peu 
pres  completement  les  matieres  qu'a,  un 
moment  donne  elle  eclaire. 

Maintenant  je  vous  demande  si  on  ne  pour- 
rait  pas  tout  aussi  bien  renverser  absolument 
cette  maniere  de  voir.  Supposons,  en  effet, 
que  la  realite  premiere  soit  de  nature  neutre, 
et  appelons-la  par  quelque  nom  encore  ambigu, 
comme  phenomene,  donne,  Vorfindung.  Moi- 
meme  3  'en  parle  volontiers  au  pluriel,  et  je  lui 
donne  le  nom  d: 'experiences  pures.  Ce  sera  un 
monisme,  si  vous  voulez,  mais  un  monisme  tout 
a  fait  rudimentaire  et  absolument  oppose  au 
soi-disant  monisme  bilateral  du  positivisme 
scientifique  ou  spinoziste. 

Ces  experiences  pures  existent  et  se  succe- 
dent,  entrent  dans  des  rapports  infiniment 
varies  les  unes  avec  les  autres,  rapports  qui 
sont  eux-memes  des  parties  essentielles  de  la 
trame  des  experiences.  II  y  a  "  Conscience  "de 
ces  rapports  au  m£me  titre  qu'il  y  a  "Con- 
science" de  leurs  termes.  II  en  resulte  que  des 

groupes  d 'experiences  se  font  remarquer  et 

226 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

distinguer,  et  qu'une  seule  et  meme  experience, 
vu  la  grande  variete  de  ses  rapports,  peut 
jouer  un  role  dans  plusieurs  groupes  a  la  fois. 
C'est  ainsi  que  dans  un  certain  contexte  de 
voisins,  elle  serait  classee  comme  un  phe- 
nomene  physique,  tandis  que  dans  un  autre 
entourage  elle  figurerait  comme  un  fait  de 
conscience,  a  peu  pres  comme  une  meme  par- 
ticule  d'encre  peut  appartenir  simultanement 
a  deux  lignes,  l'une  verticale,  Pautre  horizon- 
tale,  pourvu  qu'elle  soit  situee  a  leur  inter- 
section. 

Prenons,  pour  fixer  nos  idees,  l'experience 
que  nous  avons  a  ce  moment  du  local  ou  nous 
sommes,  de  ces  murailles,  de  cette  table,  de  ces 
chaises,  de  cet  espace.  Dans  cette  experience 
pleine,  concrete  et  indivise,  telle  qu'elle  est  la, 
donnee,  le  monde  physique  objectif  et  le  monde 
interieur  et  personnel  de  chacun  de  nous  se 
rencontrent  et  se  fusionnent  comme  des  lignes 
se  fusionnent  a  leur  intersection.  Comme  chose 
physique,  cette  salle  a  des  rapports  avec  tout 
le  reste  du  batiment,  batiment  que  nous  autres 
nous  ne  connaissons  et  ne  connaitrons  pas. 

227 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

Elle  doit  son  existence  a  toute  une  histoire  de 
financiers,  d'architectes,  d'ouvriers.  Elle  pese 
sur  le  sol;  elle  durera  indefiniment  dans  le 
temps;  si  le  feu  y  eclatait,  les  chaises  et  la 
table  qu'elle  contient  seraient  vite  reduites 
en  cendres. 

Comme  experience  personnelle,  au  contraire, 
comme  chose  "rapportee,"  connue,  consciente, 
cette  salle  a  de  tout  autres  tenants  et  aboutis- 
sants.  Ses  antecedents  ne  sont  pas  des  ouvri- 
ers,  ce  sont  nos  pensees  respectives  de  tout  a 
l'heure.  Bientot  elle  ne  figurera  que  comme 
un  fait  fugitif  dans  nos  biographies,  associe  a 
d'agreables  souvenirs.  Comme  experience  psy- 
chique,  elle  n'a  aucun  poids,  son  ameublement 
n'est  pas  combustible.  Elle  n'exerce  de  force 
physique  que  sur  nos  seuls  cerveaux,  et  beau- 
coup  d'entre  nous  nient  encore  cette  influence; 
tandis  que  la  salle  physique  est  en  rapport 
d'influence  physique  avec  tout  le  reste  du 
monde. 

Et  pourtant  c'est  de  la  meme  salle  absolu- 
ment  qu'il  s'agit  dans  les  deux  cas.  Tant  que 
nous  ne  faisons  pas  de  physique  speculative3 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

tant  que  nous  nous  plagons  dans  le  sens  com- 
mun,  c'est  la  salle  vue  et  sentie  qui  est  bien  la 
salle  physique.  De  quoi  parlons-nous  done  si 
ce  n'est  de  cela,  de  cette  meme  partie  de  la 
nature  materielle  que  tous  nos  esprits,  a  ce 
meme  moment,  embrassent,  qui  entre  telle 
quelle  dans  l'experience  actuelle  et  intime  de 
chacun  de  nous,  et  que  notre  souvenir  re- 
gardera  toujours  comme  une  partie  integrante 
de  notre  histoire.  C'est  absolument  une  meme 
etoffe  qui  figure  simultanement,  selon  le  con- 
texte  que  Ton  considere,  comme  fait  materiel 
et  physique,  ou  comme  fait  de  conscience 
intime. 

Je  crois  done  qu'on  ne  saurait  traiter  con- 
science et  matiere  comme  etant  d'essence  dis- 
parate. On  n'obtient  ni  Tune  ni  l'autre  par 
soustraction,  en  negligeant  chaque  fois  l'autre 
moitie  d'une  experience  de  composition  double. 
Les  experiences  sont  au  contraire  primitive- 
ment  de  nature  plutot  simple.  Elles  deviennent 
conscientes  dans  leur  entier,  elles  deviennent 
physiques  dans  leur  entier;  et  c'est  par  voie 
d'addition  que  ce  resultat  se  realise.  Pour  au- 

229 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

tant  que  des  experiences  se  prolongent  dans  le 
temps,  entrent  dans  des  rapports  d'influence 
physique,  se  brisant,  se  chauffant,  s'eclairant, 
etc.,  mutuellement,  nous  en  faisons  un  groupe 
a  part  que  nous  appelons  le  monde  physique. 
Pour  autant,  au  contraire,  qu'elles  sont  fugi- 
tives, inertes  physiquement,  que  leur  succes- 
sion ne  suit  pas  d'ordre  determine,  mais  semble 
plutot  obeir  a  des  caprices  emotifs,  nous  en 
faisons  un  autre  groupe  que  nous  appelons  le 
monde  psychique.  C'est  en  entrant  a  present 
dans  un  grand  nombre  de  ces  groupes  psy- 
chiques  que  cette  salle  devient  maintenant 
chose  consciente,  chose  rapportee,  chose  sue. 
En  faisant  desormais  partie  de  nos  biographies 
respectives,  elle  ne  sera  pas  suivie  de  cette  sotte 
et  monotone  repetition  d'elle-meme  dans  le 
temps  qui  caracterise  son  existence  physique. 
Elle  sera  suivie,  au  contraire,  par  d'autres 
experiences  qui  seront  discontinues  avec  elle, 
ou  qui  auront  ce  genre  tout  particulier  de  con- 
tinuity que  nous  appelons  souvenir.  Demain, 
elle  aura  eu  sa  place  dans  chacun  de  nos 
passes;  mais  les  presents  divers  auxquels  tous 

230 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

ces  passes  seront  lies  demain  seront  bien  differ- 
ents  du  present  dont  cette  salle  jouira  demain 
comme  entite  physique. 

i  Les  deux  genres  de  groupes  sont  formes 
d'experiences,  mais  les  rapports  des  experiences 
entre  elles  different  d'un  groupe  a  l'autre. 
C'est  done  par  addition  d'autres  phenomenes 
qu'un  phenomene  donne  devient  conscient  ou 
connu,  ce  n'est  pas  par  un  dedoublement 
d'essence  interieure.  La  connaissance  des 
choses  leur  survient,  elle  ne  leur  est  pas  im- 
manente.  Ce  n'est  le  fait  ni  d'un  moi  tran- 
scendental, ni  d'une  Bewusstheit  ou  acte  de 
conscience  qui  les  animerait  chacune.  Elles  se 
connaissent  Vune  V autre,  ou  plutot  il  y  en  a  qui 
connaissent  les  autres;  et  le  rapport  que  nous 
nommons  connaissance  n'est  lui-meme,  dans 
beaucoup  de  cas,  qu'une  suite  d'experiences 
intermediaires  parf aitement  susceptibles  d'etre 
decrites  en  termes  concrets.  II  n'est  nullement 
le  mystere  transcendant  ou  se  sont  complus 
tant  de  philosophes. 

Mais  ceci  nous  menerait  beaucoup  trop  loin. 
Je  ne  puis  entrer  ici  dans  tous  les  replis  de  la 

231 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

theorie  de  la  connaissance,  ou  de  ce  que,  vous 
autres  Italiens,  vous  appelez  la  gnoseologie.  Je 
dois  me  contenter  de  ces  remarques  ecourtees, 
ou  simples  suggestions,  qui  sont,  je  le  crains, 
encore  bien  obscures  faute  des  developpements 
necessaires. 

Permettez  done  que  je  me  resume  —  trop 
sommairement,  et  en  style  dogmatique  — 
dans  les  six  theses  suivantes: 

1°  La  Conscience,  telle  qu'on  Ventend  ordi- 
nairement,  n'existe  pas,  pas  plus  que  la  Matiere, 
a  laquelle  Berkeley  a  donne  le  coup  de  grace; 

2°  Ce  qui  existe  et  forme  la  part  de  verite  que  le 
mot  de  "Conscience"  recouvre,  e'est  la  suscep- 
tibilite  que  possedent  les  parties  de  V experience 
d'etre  rapportees  ou  connues; 

3°  Cette  susceptibilite  s'explique  par  le  fait 
que  certaines  experiences  peuvent  mener  les  unes 
aux  autres  par  des  experiences  intermediates 
nettement  caracterisees,  de  telle  sorte  que  les  unes 
se  trouvent  jouer  le  role  de  choses  connues,  les 
autres  celui  de  sujets  connaissants  ; 

4°  On  pent  parfaitement  definir  ces  deux  roles 


LA  NOTION  DE  CONSCIENCE 

sans  sortir  de  la  trame  de  V experience  meme,  et 
sans  invoquer  rien  de  transcendant ; 

5°  Les  attributions  sujet  et  objet,  represents  et 
representatif,  chose  et  pensee,  signifient  done  une 
distinction  pratique  qui  est  de  la  dernier e  impor- 
tance, mais  qui  est  d'ordre  fonctionnel  seule- 
ment,  et  nullement  ontologique  comme  le  dualisme 
classique  se  la  represente; 

6°  En  fin  de  compte,  les  choses  et  les  pensees  ne 
sont  point  foncierement  heterogenes,  mais  elles 
sontfaites  oVune  meme  etojje,  etoffe  qu'on  ne  peut 
definir  comme  telle,  mais  seulement  eprouver,  et 
que  Von  peut  nommer,  si  on  veut,  Vetoffe  de 
V experience  en  general. 


IX 

IS  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM  SOLIP- 
SISTIC? 

If  all  the  criticisms  which  the  humanistic 
Weltanschauung  is  receiving  were  as  sachgemass 
as  Mr.  Bode's,2  the  truth  of  the  matter  would 
more  rapidly  clear  up.  Not  only  is  it  excel- 
lently well  written,  but  it  brings  its  own  point 
of  view  out  clearly,  and  admits  of  a  perfectly 
straight  reply. 

The  argument  (unless  I  fail  to  catch  it)  can 
be  expressed  as  follows : 

If  a  series  of  experiences  be  supposed,  no  one 
of  which  is  endowed  immediately  with  the  self- 
transcendent  function  of  reference  to  a  reality 
beyond  itself,  no  motive  will  occur  within  the 
series  for  supposing  anything  beyond  it  to 
exist.  It  will  remain  subjective,  and  content- 
edly subjective,  both  as  a  whole  and  in  its 
several  parts. 

1  [Reprinted  from  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  n,  No.  9,  April  27,  1905.] 

2  [B.  H.  Bode:  "'Pure  Experience'  and  the  External  World," 
Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods,  vol.  II, 
1905,  p.  128.] 


IS  EMPIRICISM  SOLIPSISTIC? 

Radical  empiricism,  trying,  as  it  does,  to 
account  for  objective  knowledge  by  means  of 
such  a  series,  egregiously  fails.  It  can  not 
explain  how  the  notion  of  a  physical  order,  as 
distinguished  from  a  subjectively  biographical 
order,  of  experiences,  ever  arose. 

It  pretends  to  explain  the  notion  of  a  physi- 
cal order,  but  does  so  by  playing  fast  and  loose 
with  the  concept  of  objective  reference.  On 
the  one  hand,  it  denies  that  such  reference 
implies  self-transcendency  on  the  part  of  any 
one  experience;  on  the  other  hand,  it  claims 
that  experiences  point.  But,  critically  con- 
sidered, there  can  be  no  pointing  unless  self- 
transcendency  be  also  allowed.  The  conjunc- 
tive function  of  pointing,  as  I  have  assumed  it, 
is,  according  to  my  critic,  vitiated  by  the  fal- 
lacy of  attaching  a  bilateral  relation  to  a  term 
a  quo,  as  if  it  could  stick  out  substantively  and 
maintain  itself  in  existence  in  advance  of  the 
term  ad  quern  which  is  equally  required  for  it 
to  be  a  concretely  experienced  fact.  If  the 
relation  be  made  concrete,  the  term  ad  quern  is 
involved,  which  would  mean  (if  I  succeed  in 

235 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

apprehending  Mr.  Bode  rightly)  that  this 
latter  term,  although  not  empirically  there,  is 
yet  noetically  there,  in  advance  —  in  other 
words  it  would  mean  that  any  experience  that 
'points'  must  already  have  transcended  itself , 
in  the  ordinary  'epistemological'  sense  of  the 
word  transcend. 

Something  like  this,  if  I  understand  Mr. 
Bode's  text,  is  the  upshot  of  his  state  of  mind. 
It  is  a  reasonable  sounding  state  of  mind,  but 
it  is  exactly  the  state  of  mind  which  radical 
empiricism,  by  its  doctrine  of  the  reality  of 
conjunctive  relations,  seeks  to  dispel.  I  very 
much  fear  —  so  difficult  does  mutual  under- 
standing seem  in  these  exalted  regions  —  that 
my  able  critic  has  failed  to  understand  that 
doctrine  as  it  is  meant  to  be  understood.  I 
suspect  that  he  performs  on  all  these  conjunc- 
tive relations  (of  which  the  aforesaid  'point- 
ing' is  only  one)  the  usual  rationalistic  act  of 
substitution  —  he  takes  them  not  as  they  are 
given  in  their  first  intention,  as  parts  consti- 
tutive of  experience's  living  flow,  but  only  as 
they  appear  in  retrospect,  each  fixed  as  a 

236 


IS  EMPIRICISM  SOLIPSISTIC? 

determinate  object  of  conception,  static,  there- 
fore, and  contained  within  itself. 

Against  this  rationalistic  tendency  to  treat 
experience  as  chopped  up  into  discontinuous 
static  objects,  radical  empiricism  protests.  It 
insists  on  taking  conjunctions  at  their* face- 
value,'  just  as  they  come.  Consider,  for  ex- 
ample, such  conjunctions  as  'and,'  'with,' 
'near,'  'plus,'  'towards.'  While  we  live  in  such 
conjunctions  our  state  is  one  of  transition  in 
the  most  literal  sense.  We  are  expectant  of  a 
'more'  to  come,  and  before  the  more  has  come, 
the  transition,  nevertheless,  is  directed  towards 
it.  I  fail  otherwise  to  see  how,  if  one  kind  of 
more  comes,  there  should  be  satisfaction  and 
feeling  of  fulfilment;  but  disappointment  if 
the  more  comes  in  another  shape.  One  more 
will  continue,  another  more  will  arrest  or 
deflect  the  direction,  in  which  our  experience 
is  moving  even  now.  We  can  not,  it  is  true, 
name  our  different  living  'ands'  or  'withs' 
except  by  naming  the  different  terms  towards 
which  they  are  moving  us,  but  we  live  their 
specifications    and    differences    before    those 

237 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

terms  explicitly  arrive.  Thus,  though  the 
various  'ands'  are  all  bilateral  relations,  each 
requiring  a  term  ad  quern  to  define  it  when 
viewed  in  retrospect  and  articulately  con- 
ceived, yet  in  its  living  moment  any  one  of 
them  may  be  treated  as  if  it  *  stuck  out'  from 
its  term  a  quo  and  pointed  in  a  special  direc- 
tion, much  as  a  compass-needle  (to  use  Mr. 
Bode's  excellent  simile)  points  at  the  pole, 
even  though  it  stirs  not  from  its  box. 

In  Professor  Hoffding's  massive  little  art- 
icle in  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology 
and  Scientific  Methods,1  he  quotes~a  saying  of 
Kierkegaard's  to  the  effect  that  we  live  for- 
wards, but  we  understand  backwards.  Under- 
standing backwards  is,  it  must  be  confessed,  a 
very  frequent  weakness  of  philosophers,  both 
of  the  rationalistic  and  of  the  ordinary  empiri- 
cist type.  Radical  empiricism  alone  insists  on 
understanding  forwards  also,  and  refuses  to 
substitute  static  concepts  of  the  understand- 
ing for  transitions  in  our  moving  life.  A  logic 
similar  to  that  which  my  critic  seems  to  employ 

*  Vol.  ii,  [1905],  pp.  85-92. 

238 


IS  EMPIRICISM  SOLIPSISTIC? 

here  should,  it  seems  to  me,  forbid  him  to  say 
that  our  present  is,  while  present,  directed 
towards  our  future,  or  that  any  physical 
movement  can  have  direction  until  its  goal  is 
actually  reached. 

At  this  point  does  it  not  seem  as  if  the 
quarrel  about  self -transcendency  in  knowledge 
might  drop?  Is  it  not  a  purely  verbal  dispute? 
Call  it  self-transcendency  or  call  it  pointing, 
whichever  you  like  —  it  makes  no  difference 
so  long  as  real  transitions  towards  real  goals 
are  admitted  as  things  given  in  experience,  and 
among  experience's  most  indefeasible  parts. 
Radical  empiricism,  unable  to  close  its  eyes  to 
the  transitions  caught  in  actu,  accounts  for  the 
self-transcendency  or  the  pointing  (whichever 
you  may  call  it)  as  a  process  that  occurs  within 
experience,  as  an  empirically  mediated  thing 
of  which  a  perfectly  definite  description  can 
be  given.  '  Epistemology,'  on  the  other  hand, 
denies  this;  and  pretends  that  the  self -tran- 
scendency is  unmediated  or,  if  mediated,  then 
mediated  in  a  super-empirical  world.  To  jus- 
tify this  pretension,  epistemology  has  first  to 

239 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

transform  all  our  conjunctions  into  static 
objects,  and  this,  I  submit,  is  an  absolutely 
arbitrary  act.  But  in  spite  of  Mr.  Bode's  mal- 
treatment of  conjunctions,  as  I  understand 
them  —  and  as  I  understand  him  —  I  believe 
that  at  bottom  we  are  fighting  for  nothing  dif- 
ferent, but  are  both  defending  the  same  con- 
tinuities of  experience  in  different  forms  of 
words. 

There  are  other  criticisms  in  the  article  in 
question,  but,  as  this  seems  the  most  vital  one, 
I  will  for  the  present,  at  any  rate,  leave  them 
untouched. 


X 


MR.    PITKIN'S    REFUTATION    OF 
'RADICAL    EMPIRICISM'* 

Although  Mr.  Pitkin  does  not  name  me  in 
his  acute  article  on  radical  empiricism,2  [..-.] 
I  fear  that  some  readers,  knowing  me  to  have 
applied  that  name  to  my  own  doctrine,  may 
possibly  consider  themselves  to  have  been  in  at 
my  death. 

In  point  of  fact  my  withers  are  entirely 
un wrung.  I  have,  indeed,  said3  that  'to  be 
radical,  an  empiricism  must  not  admit  into  its 
constructions  any  element  that  is  not  directly 
experienced.'  But  in  my  own  radical  empiri- 
cism this  is  only  a  methodological  postulate,  not 
a  conclusion  supposed  to  flow  from  the  intrin- 
sic absurdity  of  transempirical  objects.  I  have 
never  felt  the  slightest  respect  for  the  idealistic 

1  [Reprinted  from  the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and 
Scientific  Methods,  vol.  in,  No.  26,  December  20, 1906;  and  ibid.,  vol. 
iv,  No.  4,  February  14,  1907,  where  the  original  is  entitled  "A  Reply 
to  Mr.  Pitkin."    Ed.] 

1  [W.  B.  Pitkin:  "A  Problem  of  Evidence  in  Radical  Empiricism," 
ibid.,  vol.  in.  No.  24,  November  22,  1906.   Ed.] 

8  [Above,  p.  42.   Ed.] 

241 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

arguments  which  Mr.  Pitkin  attacks  and  of 
which  Ferrier  madejsuch  striking  use;  and  I 
am  perfectly  willing  to  admit  any  number  of 
noumenal  beings  or  events  into  philosophy  if 
only  their  pragmatic  value  can  be  shown. 

Radical  empiricism  and  pragmatism  have  so 
many  misunderstandings  to  suffer  from,  that 
it  seems  my  duty  not  to  let  this  one  go  any 
farther,  uncorrected. 

Mr.  Pitkin's  *  reply '  to  me,1  [.  .  .  ]  perplexes 
me  by  the  obscurity  of  style  which  I  find  in 
almost  all  our  younger  philosophers.  He  asks 
me,  however,  two  direct  questions  which  I 
understand,  so  I  take  the  liberty  of  answering. 

First  he  asks:  Do  not  experience  and  science 
show  'that  countless  things  are  2  experienced 
as  that  which  they  are  not  or  are  only  par- 
tially?' I  reply :  Yes,  assuredly,  as,  for  example, 
*  things'  distorted  by  refractive  media,  *  mole- 
cules,' or  whatever  else  is  taken  to  be  more 

1  ["  In  Reply  to  Professor  James,"  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psycho- 
logy and  Scientific  Methods,  vol.  iv,  No.  2,  January  17, 1907.    Ed.] 

a  Mr.  Pitkin  inserts  the  clause:  'by  reason  of  the  very  nature  of 
experience  itself.'  Not  understanding  just  what  reason  is  meant,  I  do 
not  include  this  clause  in  my  answer. 

242 


PITKIN  ON   'RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ultimately  real  than  the  immediate  content  of 
the  perceptive  moment. 

Secondly:  "If  experience  is  self-supporting  l 
(in  any  intelligible  sense)  does  this  fact  pre- 
clude the  possibility  of  (a)  something  not 
experienced  and  (b)  action  of  experience  upon 
a  noumenon  ?  " 

My  reply  is:  Assuredly  not  the  possibility 
of  either  —  how  could  it?  Yet  in  my  opinion 
we  should  be  wise  not  to  consider  any  thing 
or  action  of  that  nature,  and  to  restrict  our 
universe  of  philosophic  discourse  to  what  is 
experienced  or,  at  least,  experienceable.2 

1  [See  above,  p.  193.    Ed.] 

2  [Elsewhere,  in  speaking  of  'reality 'as  "conceptual  or  perceptual 
experiences,"  the  author  says:  "This  is  meant  merely  to  exclude  real- 
ity of  an  'unknowable'  sort,  of  which  no  account  in  either  perceptual 
or  conceptual  terms  can  be  given.  It  includes,  of  course,  any  amount 
of  empirical  reality  independent  of  the  knower."  Meaning  of  Truth, 
p.  100,  note.    Ed.] 


XI 

HUMANISM   AND   TRUTH  ONCE 
MORE.1 

Mr.  Joseph's  criticism  of  my  article  *  Hu- 
manism and  Truth ' 2  is  a  useful  contribution  to 
the  general  clearing  up.  He  has  seriously  tried 
to  comprehend  what  the  pragmatic  movement 
may  intelligibly  mean;  and  if  he  has  failed,  it 
is  the  fault  neither  of  his  patience  nor  of  his 
sincerity,  but  rather  of  stubborn  tricks  of 
thought  which  he  could  not  easily  get  rid  of. 
Minute  polemics,  in  which  the  parties  try 
to  rebut  every  detail  of  each  of  the  other's 
charges,  are  a  useful  exercise  only  to  the  dis- 
putants. They  can  but  breed  confusion  in  a 
reader.  I  will  therefore  ignore  as  much  as 
possible  the  text  of  both  our  articles  (mine  was 
inadequate  enough)  and  treat  once  more  the 
general  objective  situation. 

1  [Reprinted  without  change  from  Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  xiv,  No.  54, 
April,  1905,  pp.  190-198.  Pages  245-247,  and  pp.  261-265,  have  also 
been  reprinted  in  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp.  54-57,  and  pp.  97-100. 
The  present  essay  is  referred  to  above,  p.  203.    Ed.] 

2  ['Humanism  and  Truth' first  appeared  in  Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  xm, 
No.  52,  October,  1904.   It  is  reprinted  in  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  pp. 

244 


HUMANISM    AND   TRUTH 

As  I  apprehend  the  movement  towards 
humanism,  it  is  based  on  no  particular  dis- 
covery or  principle  that  can  be  driven  into  one 
precise  formula  which  thereupon  can  be  im- 
paled upon  a  logical  skewer.  It  is  much  more 
like  one  of  those  secular  changes  that  come 
upon  public  opinion  over-night,  as  it  were, 
borne  upon  tides  'too  full  for  sound  or  foam/ 
that  survive  all  the  crudities  and  extrava- 
gances of  their  advocates,  that  you  can  pin  to 
no  one  absolutely  essential  statement,  nor  kill 
by  any  one  decisive  stab. 

Such  have  been  the  changes  from  aristo- 
cracy to  democracy,  from  classic  to  romantic 
taste,  from  theistic  to  pantheistic  feeling,  from 
static  to  evolutionary  ways  of  understanding 
life  —  changes  of  which  we  all  have  been 
spectators.  Scholasticism  still  opposes  to  such 
changes  the  method  of  confutation  by  single 
decisive  reasons,  showing  that  the  new  view 
involves  self-contradiction,  or  traverses  some 
fundamental  principle.    This  is  like  stopping 

51-101.  Cf.  this  article  passim.  Mr.  H.  W.  B.  Joseph's  criticism, 
entitled  "Professor  James  on  '  Humanism  and  Truth,'  "  appeared  in 
Mind,  N.  S.,  vol.  xiv,  No.  53,  January,  1905.    Ed.] 

245 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

a  river  by  planting  a  stick  in  the  middle  of 
its  bed.  Round  your  obstacle  flows  the  water 
and  'gets  there  all  the  same.'  In  reading  Mr. 
Joseph,  I  am  not  a  little  reminded  of  those 
Catholic  writers  who  refute  Darwinism  by 
telling  us  that  higher  species  can  not  come  from 
lower  because  minus  nequit  gignere  plus,  or 
that  the  notion  of  transformation  is  absurd,  for 
it  implies  that  species  tend  to  their  own  de- 
struction, and  that  would  violate  the  principle 
that  every  reality  tends  to  persevere  in  its  own 
shape.  The  point  of  view  is  too  myopic,  too 
tight  and  close  to  take  in  the  inductive  argu- 
ment. You  can  not  settle  questions  of  fact  by 
formal  logic.  I  feel  as  if  Mr.  Joseph  almost 
pounced  on  my  words  singly,  without  giving 
the  sentences  time  to  get  out  of  my  mouth. 

The  one  condition  of  understanding  hu- 
manism is  to  become  inductive-minded  one- 
self, to  drop  rigorous  definitions,  and  follow 
lines  of  least  resistance  'on  the  whole.'  "In 
other  words,"  Mr.  Joseph  may  probably  say, 
"resolve  your  intellect  into  a  kind  of  slush." 

"Even  so,"  I  make  reply,  —  "if  you  will  con- 

246 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

sefit  to  use  no  politer  word."  For  humanism, 
conceiving  the  more  'true'  as  the  more  *  satis- 
factory' (Dewey's  term)  has  to  renounce  sin- 
cerely rectilinear  arguments  and  ancient  ideals 
of  rigor  and  finality.  It  is  in  just  this  tem- 
per of  renunciation,  so  different  from  that 
of  pyrrhonistic  scepticism,  that  the  spirit  of 
humanism  essentially  consists.  Satisfactori- 
ness  has  to  be  measured  by  a  multitude  of 
standards,  of  which  some,  for  aught  we  know, 
may  fail  in  any  given  case;  and  what  is  'more' 
satisfactory  than  any  alternative  in  sight,  may 
to  the  end  be  a  sum  of  pluses  and  minuses, 
concerning  which  we  can  only  trust  that  by 
ulterior  corrections  and  improvements  a  maxi- 
mum of  the  one  and  a  minimum  of  the  other 
may  some  day  be  approached.  It  means  a  real 
change  of  heart,  a  break  with  absolutistic 
hopes,  when  one  takes  up  this  view  of  the 
conditions  of  belief. 

That  humanism's  critics  have  never  im- 
agined this  attitude  inwardly,  is  shown  by 
their  invariable  tactics.  They  do  not  get  into 
it  far  enough  to  see  objectively  and  from  with- 

247 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

out  what  their  own  opposite  notion  of  truth  is. 
Mr.  Joseph  is  possessed  by  some  such  notion; 
he  thinks  his  readers  to  be  full  of  it,  he  obeys 
it,  works  from  it,  but  never  even  essays  to  tell 
us  what  it  is.  The  nearest  he  comes  to  doing 
so  is  where  1  he  says  it  is  the  way  "we  ought 
to  think,"  whether  we  be  psychologically  com- 
pelled to  or  not. 

Of  course  humanism  agrees  to  this :  it  is  only 
a  manner  of  calling  truth  an  ideal.  But 
humanism  explicates  the  summarizing  word 
'  ought '  into  a  mass  of  pragmatic  motives  from 
the  midst  of  which  our  critics  think  that  truth 
itself  takes  flight.  Truth  is  a  name  of  double 
meaning.  It  stands  now  for  an  abstract  some- 
thing defined  only  as  that  to  which  our  thought 
ought  to  conform;  and  again  it  stands  for  the 
concrete  propositions  within  which  we  believe 
that  conformity  already  reigns  —  they  being 
so  many  'truths.'  Humanism  sees  that  the 
only  conformity  we  ever  have  to  deal  with 
concretely  is  that  between  our  subjects  and 
our  predicates,  using  these  words  in  a  very 

»  Op.  cil.,  p.  37. 

248 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

broad  sense.  It  sees  moreover  that  this  con- 
formity is  *  validated'  (to  use  Mr.  Schiller's 
term)  by  an  indefinite  number  of  pragmatic 
tests  that  vary  as  the  predicates  and  subjects 
vary.  If  an  S  gets  superseded  by  an  SP  that 
gives  our  mind  a  completer  sum  of  satisfac- 
tions, we  always  say,  humanism  points  out, 
that  we  have  advanced  to  a  better  position  in 
regard  to  truth. 

Now  many  of  our  judgments  thus  attained 
are  retrospective.  The  S'es,  so  the  judgment 
runs,  were  SP's  already  ere  the  fact  was  hu- 
manly recorded.  Common  sense,  struck  by 
this  state  of  things,  now  rearranges  the  whole 
field;  and  traditional  philosophy  follows  her 
example.  The  general  requirement  that  predi- 
cates must  conform  to  their  subject,  they 
translate  into  an  ontological  theory.  A  most 
previous  Subject  of  all  is  substituted  for  the 
lesser  subjects  and  conceived  of  as  an  arche- 
typal Reality;  and  the  conformity  required  of 
predicates  in  detail  is  reinterpreted  as  a  rela- 
tion which  our  whole  mind,  with  all  its  sub- 
jects and  predicates  together,  must  get  into 

249 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

with  respect  to  this  Reality.  It,  meanwhile,  is 
conceived  as  eternal,  static,  and  unaffected 
by  our  thinking.  Conformity  to  a  non-human 
Archetype  like  this  is  probably  the  notion  of 
truth  which  my  opponent  shares  with  common 
sense  and  philosophic  rationalism. 

When  now  Humanism,  fully  admitting  both 
the  naturalness  and  the  grandeur  of  this  hypo- 
thesis, nevertheless  points  to  its  sterility,  and 
declines  to  chime  in  with  the  substitution, 
keeping  to  the  concrete  and  still  lodging  truth 
between  the  subjects  and  the  predicates  in 
detail,  it  provokes  the  outcry  which  we  hear 
and  which  my  critic  echoes. 

One  of  the  commonest  parts  of  the  outcry  is 
that  humanism  is  subjectivistic  altogether  — 
it  is  supposed  to  labor  under  a  necessity  of 
*  denying  trans-perceptual  reality.' 1  It  is  not 
hard  to  see  how  this  misconception  of  human- 
ism may  have  arisen;  and  humanistic  writers, 
partly  from  not  having  sufficiently  guarded 
their  expressions,  and  partly  from  not  having 
yet  "got  round"  (in  the  poverty  of  their  liter- 

«  [Cf.  above,  pp.  241-243.] 
250 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

ature)  to  a  full  discussion  of  the  subject,  are 
doubtless  in  some  degree  to  blame.  But  I  fail 
to  understand  how  any  one  with  a  working 
grasp  of  their  principles  can  charge  them 
wholesale  with  subjectivism.  ;I  myself  have 
never  thought  of  humanism  as  being  subject- 
ivistic  farther  than  to  this  extent,  that,  inas- 
much as  it  treats  the  thinker  as  being  himself 
one  portion  of  reality,  it  must  also  allow  that 
some  of  the  realities  that  he  declares  for  true 
are  created  by  his  being  there.  Such  realities 
of  course  are  either  acts  of  his,  or  relations 
between  other  things  and  him,  or  relations 
between  things,  which,  but  for  him,  would 
never  have  been  traced.  Humanists  are  sub- 
jectivistic,  also  in  this,  that,  unlike  rationalists 
(who  think  they  carry  a  warrant  for  the  abso- 
lute truth  of  what  they  now  believe  in  in  their 
present  pocket),  they  hold  all  present  beliefs 
as  subject  to  revision  in  the  light  of  future 
experience.  The  future  experience,  however, 
may  be  of  things  outside  the  thinker;  and  that 
this  is  so  the  humanist  may  believe  as  freely 

as  any  other  kind  of  empiricist  philosopher. 

251 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

The  critics  of  humanism  (though  here  I 
follow  them  but  darkly)  appear  to  object  to 
any  infusion  whatever  of  subjectivism  into 
truth.  All  must  be  archetypal;  every  truth 
must  pre-exist  to  its  perception.  Humanism 
sees  that  an  enormous  quantity  of  truth  must 
be  written  down  as  having  pre-existed  to  its 
perception  by  us  humans.  In  countless  in- 
stances we  find  it  most  satisfactory  to  believe 
that,  though  we  were  always  ignorant  of  the 
fact,  it  always  was  a  fact  that  S  was  SP.  But 
humanism  separates  this  class  of  cases  from 
those  in  which  it  is  more  satisfactory  to  believe 
the  opposite,  e.g.,  that  S  is  ephemeral,  or  P  a 
passing  event,  or  SP  created  by  the  perceiv- 
ing act.  Our  critics  seem  on  the  other  hand, 
to  wish  to  universalize  the  retrospective  type 
of  instance.  Reality  must  pre-exist  to  every 
assertion  for  which  truth  is  claimed.  And,  not 
content  with  this  overuse  of  one  particular 
type  of  judgment,  our  critics  claim  its  mono- 
poly. They  appear  to  wish  to  cut  off  Hu- 
manism from  its  rights  to  any  retrospection 

at  all. 

252 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

Humanism  says  that  satisfactoriness  is  what 
distinguishes  the  true  from  the  false.  But  sat- 
isfactoriness is  both  a  subjective  quality,  and 
a  present  one.  Ergo  (the  critics  appear  to 
reason)  an  object,  qua  true,  must  always  for 
humanism  be  both  present  and  subjective,  and 
a  humanist's  belief  can  never  be  in  anything 
that  lives  outside  of  the  belief  itself  or  ante- 
dates it.  Why  so  preposterous  a  charge  should 
be  so  current,  I  find  it  hard  to  say.  Nothing 
is  more  obvious  than  the  fact  that  both  the 
objective  and  the  past  existence  of  the  object 
may  be  the  very  things  about  it  that  most 
seem  satisfactory,  and  that  most  invite  us  to 
believe  them.  The  past  tense  can  figure  in  the 
humanist's  world,  as  well  of  belief  as  of  re- 
presentation, quite  as  harmoniously  as  in  the 
world  of  any  one  else. 

Mr.  Joseph  gives  a  special  turn  to  this 
accusation.  He  charges  me  l  with  being  self- 
contradictory  when  I  say  that  the  main  cate- 
gories of  thought  were  evolved  in  the  course  of 
experience  itself.    For  I  use  these  very  cate- 

J  Op.  cit.,  p.  32. 

253 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

gories  to  define  the  course  of  experience  by. 
Experience,  as  I  talk  about  it,  is  a  product  of 
their  use;  and  yet  I  take  it  as  true  anteriorly 
to  them.  This  seems  to  Mr.  Joseph  to  be  an 
absurdity.  I  hope  it  does  not  seem  such  to  his 
readers;  for  if  experiences  can  suggest  hypo- 
theses at  all  (and  they  notoriously  do  so)  I  can 
see  no  absurdity  whatever  in  the  notion  of  a 
retrospective  hypothesis  having  for  its  object 
the  very  train  of  experiences  by  which  its  own 
being,  along  with  that  of  other  things,  has 
been  brought  about.  If  the  hypothesis  is 
*  satisfactory '  we  must,  of  course,  believe  it 
to  have  been  true  anteriorly  to  its  formula- 
tion by  ourselves.  Every  explanation  of 
a  present  by  a  past  seems  to  involve  this 
kind  of  circle,  which  is  not  a  vicious  circle. 
The  past  is  causa  existendi  of  the  present, 
which  in  turn  is  causa  cognoscendi  of  the 
past.  If  the  present  were  treated  as  causa  ex- 
istendi  of  the  past,  the  circle  might  indeed  be 
vicious. 

Closely  connected   with  this  pseudo-diffi- 
culty is  another  one  of  wider  scope  and  greater 

254 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

complication  —  more  excusable  therefore.1 
Humanism,  namely,  asking  how  truth  in  point 
of  fact  is  reached,  and  seeing  that  it  is  by  ever 
substituting  more  satisfactory  for  less  satis- 
factory opinions,  is  thereby  led  into  a  vague 
historic  sketch  of  truth's  development.  The 
earliest  'opinions,'  it  thinks,  must  have  been 
dim,  unconnected  'feelings,'  and  only  little  by 
little  did  more  and  more  orderly  views  of 
things  replace  them.  Our  own  retrospective 
view  of  this  whole  evolution  is  now,  let  us  say, 
the  latest  candidate  for  'truth'  as  yet  reached 
in  the  process.  To  be  a  satisfactory  candidate, 
it  must  give  some  definite  sort  of  a  picture  of 
what  forces  keep  the  process  going.  On  the 
subjective  side  we  have  a  fairly  definite  picture 
—  sensation,  association,  interest,  hypothesis, 
these  account  in  a  general  way  for  the  growth 
into  a  cosmos  of  the  relative  chaos  with  which 
the  mind  began. 

But  on  the  side  of  the  object,  so  to  call  it 
roughly,  our  view  is  much  less  satisfactory. 

1  [This]  Mr.  Joseph  deals  with  (though  in  much  too  pettifogging 
and  logic-chopping  a  way)  on  pp.  33-34  of  his  article. 

255 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

Of  which  of  our  many  objects  are  we  to  believe 
that  it  truly  was  there  and  at  work  before 
the  human  mind  began?  Time,  space,  kind, 
number,  serial  order,  cause,  consciousness, 
are  hard  things  not  to  objectify  —  even  tran- 
scendental idealism  leaves  them  standing  as 
*  empirically  real.'  Substance,  matter,  force, 
fall  down  more  easily  before  criticism,  and 
secondary  qualities  make  almost  no  resistance 
at  all.  Nevertheless,  when  we  survey  the  field 
of  speculation,  from  Scholasticism  through 
Kantism  to  Spencerism,  we  find  an  ever-recur- 
ring tendency  to  convert  the  pre-human  into  a 
merely  logical  object,  an  unknowable  ding-an- 
sich,  that  but  starts  the  process,  or  a  vague 
materia  prima  that  but  receives  our  forms.1 

The  reasons  for  this  are  not  so  much  logical 
as  they  are  material.  We  can  postulate  an 
extra-mental  that  freely  enough  (though  some 
idealists  have  denied  us  the  privilege),  but 
when  we  have  done  so,  the  what  of  it  is  hard 


1  Compare  some  elaborate  articles  by  M.  Le  Roy  and  M.  Wilbois 
in  the  Revue  de  MStaphysique  et  de  Morale,  vols,  vin,  ix,  and  x,  [1900, 
1901,  and  1902.] 

256 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

to  determine  satisfactorily,  because  of  the  op- 
positions and  entanglements  of  the  variously 
proposed  whats  with  one  another  and  with  the 
history  of  the  human  mind.  The  literature  of 
speculative  cosmology  bears  witness  to  this 
difficulty.  Humanism  suffers  from  it  no  more 
than  any  other  philosophy  suffers,  but  it 
makes  all  our  cosmogonic  theories  so  unsatis- 
factory that  some  thinkers  seek  relief  in  the 
denial  of  any  primal  dualism.  Absolute 
Thought  or  'pure  experience'  is  postulated, 
and  endowed  with  attributes  calculated  to 
justify  the  belief  that  it  may  'run  itself.'  Both 
these  truth-claiming  hypotheses  are  non- 
dualistic  in  the  old  mind-and -matter  sense; 
but  the  one  is  monistic  and  the  other  pluralistic 
as  to  the  world  process  itself.  Some  humanists 
are  non-dualists  of  this  sort  —  I  myself  am 
one  und  zwar  of  the  pluralistic  brand.  But 
doubtless  dualistic  humanists  also  exist,  as 
well  as  non-dualistic  ones  of  the  monistic  wing. 
Mr.  Joseph  pins  these  general  philosophic 
difficulties  on  humanism  alone,  or  possibly  on 
me  alone.    My  article  spoke  vaguely  of  a 

257 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

'most  chaotic  pure  experience'  coming  first, 
and  building  up  the  mind.1  But  how  can  two 
structureless  things  interact  so  as  to  produce 
a  structure?  my  critic  triumphantly  asks.  Of 
course  they  can't,  as  purely  so-named  entities. 
We  must  make  additional  hypotheses.  We 
must  beg  a  minimum  of  structure  for  them. 
The  kind  of  minimum  that  might  have  tended 
to  increase  towards  what  we  now  find  actually 
developed  is  the  philosophical  desideratum 
here.  The  question  is  that  of  the  most  ma- 
terially satisfactory  hypothesis.  Mr.  Joseph 
handles  it  by  formal  logic  purely,  as  if  he  had 
no  acquaintance  with  the  logic  of  hypothesis 
at  all. 

Mr.  Joseph  again  is  much  bewildered  as  to 
what  a  humanist  can  mean  when  he  uses  the 
word  knowledge.  He  tries  to  convict  me  2  of 
vaguely  identifying  it  with  any  kind  of  good. 
Knowledge  is  a  difficult  thing  to  define  briefly, 
and  Mr.  Joseph  shows  his  own  constructive 
hand  here  even  less  than  in  the  rest  of  his 

1  [Cf.  The  Meaning  of  Truth,  p.  64.] ; 

2  [Joseph:  op.  cit.,  p.  36.] 

258 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

article.  I  have  myself  put  forth  on  several 
occasions  a  radically  pragmatist  account  of 
knowledge,1  the  existence  of  which  account  my 
critic  probably  does  not  know  of  —  so  perhaps 
I  had  better  not  say  anything  about  knowledge 
until  he  reads  and  attacks  that.  I  will  say, 
however,  that  whatever  the  relation  called 
knowing  may  itself  prove  to  consist  in,  I  can 
think  of  no  conceivable  kind  of  object  which 
may  not  become  an  object  of  knowledge  on 
humanistic  principles  as  well  as  on  the  prin- 
ciples of  any  other  philosophy.2 

I  confess  that  I  am  pretty  steadily  hampered 
by  the  habit,  on  the  part  of  humanism's  crit- 
ics, of  assuming  that  they  have  truer  ideas 
than  mine  of  truth  and  knowledge,  the  nature 
of  which  I  must  know^of  and  can  not  need  to 
have  re-defined.  I  have  consequently  to  recon- 
struct these  ideas  in  order  to  carry  on  the  dis- 
cussion (I  have  e.g.  had  to  do  so  in  some  parts 

1  Most  recently  in  two  articles,  "Does  'Consciousness'  Exist?" 
and  "A  World  of  Pure  Experience."  [See  above,  pp.  1-91.] 

2  For  a  recent  attempt,  effective  on  the  whole,  at  squaring  hu- 
manism with  knowing,  I  may  refer  to  Prof.  Woodbridge's  very  able 
address  at  the  Saint  Louis  Congress,  "The  Field  of  Logic,"  printed 
in  Science,  N.  Y.,  November  4,  1904. 

259 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

of  this  article)  and  I  thereby  expose  myself 
to  charges  of  caricature.  In  one  part  of  Mr. 
Joseph's  attack,  however,  I  rejoice  that  we  are 
free  from  this  embarrassment.  It  is  an  im- 
portant point  and  covers  probably  a  genuine 
difficulty,  so  I  take  it  up  last. 

When,  following  Schiller  and  Dewey,  I  de- 
fine the  true  as  that  which  gives  the  maximal 
combination  of  satisfactions,  and  say  that 
satisfaction  is  a  many-dimensional  term  that 
can  be  realized  in  various  ways,  Mr.  Joseph 
replies,  rightly  enough,  that  the  chief  satis- 
faction of  a  rational  creature  must  always  be 
his  thought  that  what  he  believes  is  true, 
whether  the  truth  brings  him  the  satisfaction 
of  collateral  profits  or  not.  This  would  seem, 
however,  to  make  of  truth  the  prior  concept, 
and  to  relegate  satisfaction  to  a  secondary 
place. 

Again,  if  to  be  satisfactory  is  what  is  meant 
by  being  true,  whose  satisfactions,  and  which  of 
his  satisfactions,  are  to  count?  Discrimina- 
tions notoriously  have  to  be  made;  and  the 

upshot  is  that  only  rational  candidates  and 

260 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

intellectual  satisfactions  stand  the  test.  We 
are  then  driven  to  a  purely  theoretic  notion  of 
truth,  and  get  out  of  the  pragmatic  atmos- 
phere altogether.  And  with  this  Mr.  Joseph 
leaves  us  —  truth  is  truth,  and  there  is  an  end 
of  the  matter.  But  he  makes  a  very  pretty 
show  of  convicting  me  of  self-stultification  in 
according  to  our  purely  theoretic  satisfactions 
any  place  in  the  humanistic  scheme.  They 
crowd  the  collateral  satisfactions  out  of  house 
and  home,  he  thinks,  and  pragmatism  has  to  go 
into  bankruptcy  if  she  recognizes  them  at  all. 

There  is  no  room  for  disagreement  about 
the  facts  here;  but  the  destructive  force  of  the 
reasoning  disappears  as  soon  as  we  talk  con- 
cretely instead  of  abstractly,  and  ask,  in  our 
quality  of  good  pragmatists,  just  what  the 
famous  theoretic  needs  are  known  as  and  in 
what  the  intellectual  satisfactions  consist. 
Mr.  Joseph,  faithful  to  the  habits  of  his  party, 
makes  no  attempt  at  characterizing  them,  but 
assumes  that  their  nature  is  self-evident  to  all. 

Are  they  not  all  mere  matters  of  consistency 
—  and  emphatically  not  of  consistency  be- 

261 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

tween  an  Absolute  Reality  and  the  mind's 
copies  of  it,  but  of  actually  felt  consistency 
among  judgments,  objects,  and  manners  of 
reacting,  in  the  mind  ?  And  are  not  both  our 
need  of  such  consistency  and  our  pleasure  in  it 
conceivable  as  outcomes  of  the  natural  fact 
that  we  are  beings  that  develop  mental  habits 

—  habit  itself  proving  adaptively  beneficial  in 
an  environment  where  the  same  objects,  or  the 
same  kinds  of  objects,  recur  and  follow  'law'? 
If  this  were  so,  what  would  have  come  first 
would  have  been  the  collateral  profits  of  habit, 
and  the  theoretic  life  would  have  grown  up  in 
aid  of  these.  In  point  of  fact  this  seems  to 
have  been  the  probable  case.  At  life's  origin, 
any  present  perception  may  have  been  'true' 

—  if  such  a  word  could  then  be  applicable. 
Later,  when  reactions  became  organized,  the 
reactions  became  'true'  whenever  expectation 
was  fulfilled  by  them.  Otherwise  they  were 
'false'  or  'mistaken'  reactions.  But  the  same 
class  of  objects  needs  the  same  kind  of  reac- 
tion, so  the  impulse  to  react  consistently  must 

gradually  have  been  established,  with  a  disap- 

262 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

pointment  felt  whenever  the  results  frustrated 
expectation.  Here  is  a  perfectly  plausible  germ 
for  all  our  higher  consistencies.  Nowadays,  if 
an  object  claims  from  us  a  reaction  of  the  kind 
habitually  accorded  only  to  the  opposite  class 
of  objects,  our  mental  machinery  refuses  to 
run  smoothly.  The  situation  is  intellectually 
unsatisfactory.  To  gain  relief  we  seek  either 
to  preserve  the  reaction  by  re-interpreting  the 
object,  or,  leaving  the  object  as  it  is,  we  react 
in  a  way  contrary  to  the  way  claimed  of  us. 
Neither  solution  is  easy.  Such  a  situation 
might  be  that  of  Mr.  Joseph,  with  me  claiming 
assent  to  humanism  from  him.  He  can  not 
apperceive  it  so  as  to  permit  him  to  gratify  my 
claim;  but  there  is  enough  appeal  in  the  claim 
to  induce  him  to  write  a  whole  article  in  justi- 
fication of  his  refusal.  If  he  should  assent  to 
humanism,  on  the  other  hand,  that  would  drag 
after  it  an  unwelcome,  yea  incredible,  altera- 
tion of  his  previous  mental  beliefs.  Whichever 
alternative  he  might  adopt,  however,  a  new 
equilibrium  of  intellectual  consistency  would 
in  the  end  be  reached.  He  would  feel,  which- 

263 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ever  way  he  decided,  that  he  was  now  thinking 
truly.  But  if,  with  his  old  habits  unaltered, 
he  should  simply  add  to  them  the  new  one  of 
advocating  humanism  quietly  or  noisily,  his 
mind  would  be  rent  into  two  systems,  each  of 
which  would  accuse  the  other  of  falsehood. 
The  resultant  situation,  being  profoundly  un- 
satisfactory, would  also  be  instable. 

Theoretic  truth  is  thus  no  relation  between 
our  mind  and  archetypal  reality.  It  falls 
within  the  mind,  being  the  accord  of  some  of 
its  processes  and  objects  with  other  processes 
and  objects  — '  accord '  consisting  here  in 
well-definable  relations.  So  long  as  the  satis- 
faction of  feeling  such  an  accord  is  denied  us, 
whatever  collateral  profits  may  seem  to  inure 
from  what  we  believe  in  are  but  as  dust  in  the 
balance  —  provided  always  that  we  are  highly 
organized  intellectually,  which  the  majority 
of  us  are  not.  The  amount  of  accord  which 
satisfies  most  men  and  women  is  merely  the 
absence  of  violent  clash  between  their  usual 
thoughts  and  statements  and  the  limited 
sphere  of  sense-perceptions  in  which  their  lives 

264 


HUMANISM  AND  TRUTH 

are  cast.  The  theoretic  truth  that  most  of  us 
think  we  'ought*  to  attain  to  is  thus  the  pos- 
session of  a  set  of  predicates  that  do  not  con- 
tradict their  subjects.  We  preserve  it  as  often 
as  not  by  leaving  other  predicates  and  subjects 
out. 

In  some  men  theory  is  a  passion,  just  as 
music  is  in  others.  The  form  of  inner  consist- 
ency is  pursued  far  beyond  the  line  at  which 
collateral  profits  stop.  Such  men  systematize 
and  classify  and  schematize  and  make  synopti- 
cal tables  and  invent  ideal  objects  for  the  pure 
love  of  unifying.  Too  often  the  results,  glowing 
with  'truth'  for  the  inventors,  seem  patheti- 
cally personal  and  artificial  to  bystanders. 
Which  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  the  purely 
theoretic  criterion  of  truth  can  leave  us  in  the 
lurch  as  easily  as  any  other  criterion. 

I  think  that  if  Mr.  Joseph  will  but  consider 
all  these  things  a  little  more  concretely,  he 
may  find  that  the  humanistic  scheme  and  the 
notion  of  theoretic  truth  fall  into  line  con- 
sistently enough  to  yield  him  also  intellectual 
satisfaction. 


XII 

ABSOLUTISM  AND  EMPIRICISM1 

.No  seeker  of  truth  can  fail  to  rejoice  at  the 
terre-a-terre  sort  of  discussion  of  the  issues 
between  Empiricism  and  Transcendentalism 
(or,  as  the  champions  of  the  latter  would  prob- 
ably prefer  to  say,  between  Irrationalism  and 
Rationalism)  that  seems  to  have  begun  in 
Mind.2  It  would  seem  as  if,  over  concrete 
examples  like  Mr.  J.  S.  Haldane's,  both  parties 
ought  inevitably  to  come  to  a  better  under- 
standing. As  a  reader  with  a  strong  bias 
towards  Irrationalism,  I  have  studied  his 
article  3  with  the  liveliest  admiration  of  its 
temper  and  its  painstaking  effort  to  be  clear. 
But  the  cases  discussed  failed  to  satisfy  me, 
and  I  was  at  first  tempted  to  write  a  Note 
animadverting  upon  them  in  detail.  The 
growth  of  the  limb,  the  sea's  contour,  the 
vicarious  functioning  of  the  nerve-centre,  the 
digitalis  curing  the  heart,  are  unfortunately 

1  [Reprinted  from  Mind,  vol.  rs.  No.  84,  April,  1884.] 

2  [In  1884.] 

3  ["Life  and  Mechanism,"  Mind,  vol.  rx,  1884.] 

266 


ABSOLUTISM  AND   EMPIRICISM 

not  cases  where  we  can  see  any  through-and- 
through  conditioning  of  the  parts  by  the  whole. 
They  are  all  cases  of  reciprocity  where  sub- 
jects, supposed  independently  to  exist,  acquire 

certain  attributes  through  their  relations  to 
other  subjects.  That  they  also  exist  through 
similar  relations  is  only  an  ideal  supposition, 
not  verified  to  our  understanding  in  these  or 
any  other  concrete  cases  whatsoever. 

If,  however,  one  were  to  urge  this  solemnly, 
Mr.  Haldane's  friends  could  easily  reply  that 
he  only  gave  us  such  examples  on  account  of 
the  hardness  of  our  hearts.  He  knew  full  well 
their  imperfection,  but  he  hoped  that  to  those 
who  would  not  spontaneously  ascend  to  the 
Notion  of  the  Totality,  these  cases  might 
prove  a  spur  and  suggest  and  symbolize  some- 
thing better  than  themselves.  No  particu- 
lar case  that  can  be  brought  forward  is  a 
real  concrete.  They  are  all  abstractions  from 
the  Whole,  and  of  course  the  "through-and- 
through"  character  can  not  be  found  in  them. 
Each  of  them  still  contains  among  its  elements 
what  we  call  things,  grammatical  subjects, 

267 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

forming  a  sort  of  residual  caput  mortuum  of 
Existence  after  all  the  relations  that  figure  in 
the  examples  have  been  told  off.  On  this 
"existence,"  thinks  popular  philosophy,  things 
may  live  on,  like  the  winter  bears  on  their  own 
fat,  never  entering  relations  at  all,  or,  if  enter- 
ing them,  entering  an  entirely  different  set 
of  them  from  those  treated  of  in  Mr.  Hal- 
dane's  examples.  Thus  if  the  digitalis  were  to 
weaken  instead  of  strengthening  the  heart,  and 
to  produce  death  (as  sometimes  happens),  it 
would  determine  itself,  through  determining 
the  organism,  to  the  function  of  "kill"  instead 
of  that  of  "cure."  The  function  and  relation 
seem  adventitious,  depending  on  what  kind  of 
a  heart  the  digitalis  gets  hold  of,  the  digitalis 
and  the  heart  being  facts  external  and,  so  to 
speak,  accidental  to  each  other.  But  this  popu- 
lar view,  Mr.  Haldane's  friends  will  continue, 
is  an  illusion.  What  seems  to  us  the  "exist- 
ence" of  digitalis  and  heart  outside  of  the  rela- 
tions of  killing  or  curing,  is  but  a  function  in  a 
wider  system  of  relations,  of  which,  pro  hue 
vice,  we  take  no  account.   The  larger  system 

268 


ABSOLUTISM  AND  EMPIRICISM. 

determines  the  existence  just  as  absolutely  as 
the  system  "kill,"  or  the  system  "cure,"  de- 
termined the  function  of  the  digitalis.  As- 
cend to  the  absolute  system,  instead  of  biding 
with  these  relative  and  partial  ones,  and  you 
shall  see  that  the  law  of  through-and-through- 
ness  must  and  does  obtain. 

Of  course,  this  argument  is  entirely  reason- 
able, and  debars  us  completely  from  chopping 
logic  about  the  concrete  examples  Mr.  Hal- 
dane  has  chosen.  It  is  not  his  fault  if  his  cate- 
gories are  so  fine  an  instrument  that  nothing 
but  the  sum  total  of  things  can  be  taken  to 
show  us  the  manner  of  their  use.  It  is  simply 
our  misfortune  that  he  has  not  the  sum  total  of 
things  to  show  it  by.  Let  us  fall  back  from  all 
concrete  attempts  and  see  what  we  can  do  with 
his  notion  of  through-and-throughness,  avow- 
edly taken  in  abstracto.  In  abstract  systems 
the  "through-and-through"  Ideal  is  realized 
on  every  hand.  In  any  system,  as  such,  the 
members  are  only  members  in  the  system. 
Abolish  the  system  and  you  abolish  its  mem- 
bers, for  you  have  conceived  them  through  no 

269 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

other  property  than  the  abstract  one  of  mem- 
bership. Neither  Tightness  nor  leftness,  except 
through  bi-laterality.  Neither  mortgager  nor 
mortgagee,  except  through  mortgage.  The 
logic  of  these  cases  is  this:  —  //A,  then  B;  but 
if  B,  then  A:  wherefore  if  either,  Both;  and  if 
not  Both,  Nothing. 

It  costs  nothing,  not  even  a  mental  effort,  to 
admit  that  the  absolute  totality  of  things  may 
be  organized  exactly  after  the  pattern  of  one 
of  these  "  through-and-through  "  abstractions. 
In  fact,  it  is  the  pleasantest  and  freest  of  men- 
tal movements.  Husband  makes,  and  is  made 
by,  wife,  through  marriage;  one  makes  other, 
by  being  itself  other;  everything  self -created 
through  its  opposite  —  you  go  round  like  a 
squirrel  in  a  cage.  But  if  you  stop  and  reflect 
upon  what  you  are  about,  you  lay  bare  the 
exact  point  at  issue  between  common  sense 
and  the  "through-and-through"  school. 

What,  in  fact,  is  the  logic  of  these  abstract 
systems?  It  is,  as  we  said  above :  If  any  Mem- 
ber, then  the  Whole  System;  if  not  the  Whole 
System,  then  Nothing.    But  how  can  Logic 

270 


ABSOLUTISM  AND  EMPIRICISM 

possibly  do  anything  more  with  these  two 
hypotheses  than  combine  them  into  the  single 
disjunctive  proposition  —  "Either  this  Whole 
System,  just  as  it  stands,  or  Nothing  at  all." 
Is  not  that  disjunction  the  ultimate  word  of 
Logic  in  the  matter,  and  can  any  disjunction, 
as  such,  resolve  itself?  It  may  be  that  Mr. 
Haldane  sees  how  one  horn,  the  concept  of  the 
Whole  System,  carries  real  existence  with  it. 
But  if  he  has  been  as  unsuccessful  as  I  in  assim- 
ilating the  Hegelian  re-editings  of  the  Anselm- 
ian  proof,1  he  will  have  to  say  that  though 
Logic  may  determine  what  the  system  must 
be,  if  it  is,  something  else  than  Logic  must  tell 
us  that  it  is.  Mr.  Haldane  in  this  case  would 
probably  consciously,  or  unconsciously,  make 
an  appeal  to  Fact:  the  disjunction  is  decided, 
since  nobody  can  dispute  that  now,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  something,  and  not  nothing,  is.  We 
must  therefore,  he  would  probably  say,  go  on 
to  admit  the  Whole  System  in  the  desiderated 
sense.    Is  not  then  the  validity  of  the  Anselm- 

1  [Cf.  P.  Janet  and  G.  Slailles:  History  of  the  Problems  of  Phibsophy, 
trans,  by  Monahan,  vol.  u,  pp.  275-278;  305-307.    Ed.] 

271 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

ian  proof  the  nucleus  of  the  whole  question  be- 
tween Logic  and  Fact?  Ought  not  the  efforts 
of  Mr.  Haldane  and  his  friends  to  be  princi- 
pally devoted  to  its  elucidation?  Is  it  not  the 
real  door  of  separation  between  Empiricism 
and  Rationalism?  And  if  the  Rationalists 
leave  that  door  for  a  moment  off  its  hinges,  can 
any  power  keep  that  abstract,  opaque,  unme- 
diated,  external,  irrational,  and  irresponsible 
monster,  known  to  the  vulgar  as  bare  Fact, 
from  getting  in  and  contaminating  the  whole 
sanctuary  with  his  presence?  Can  anything 
prevent  Faust  from  changing  "Am  Anfang 
war  das  Wort"  into  "Am  Anfang  war  die 
That?" 

Nothing  in  earth  or  heaven.  Only  the  An- 
selmian  proof  can  keep  Fact  out  of  philo- 
sophy. The  question,  "Shall  Fact  be  recog- 
nized as  an  ultimate  principle?"  is  the  whole 
issue  between  the  Rationalists  and  the  Empiri- 
cism of  vulgar  thought. 

Of  course,  if  so  recognized,  Fact  sets  a  limit 
to  the  "  through-and-through "  character  of 
the  world's  rationality.  That  rationality  might 

272 


[ABSOLUTISM  AND  EMPIRICISM 

then  mediate  between  all  the  members  of  our 
conception  of  the  world,  but  not  between  the 
conception  itself  and  reality.  Reality  would 
have  to  be  given,  not  by  Reason,  but  by  Fact. 
Fact  holds  out  blankly,  brutally  and  blindly, 
against  that  universal  deliquescence  of  every- 
thing into  logical  relations  which  the  Absolut- 
ist Logic  demands,  and  it  is  the  only  thing 
that  does  hold  out.  Hence  the  ire  of  the  Ab- 
solutist Logic  —  hence  its  non-recognition,  its 
*  cutting'  of  Fact. 

The  reasons  it  gives  for  the  'cutting*  are 
that  Fact  is  speechless,  a  mere  word  for  the 
negation  of  thought,  a  vacuous  unknowability, 
a  dog-in-the-manger,  in  truth,  which  having  no 
rights  of  its  own,  can  find  nothing  else  to  do 
than  to  keep  its  betters  out  of  theirs. 

There  are  two  points  involved  here :  first  the 
claim  that  certain  things  have  rights  that  are 
absolute,  ubiquitous  and  all  pervasive,  and  in 
regard  to  which  nothing  else  can  possibly  exist 
in  its  own  right;  and  second  that  anything  that 
denies  this  assertion  is  pure  negativity  with  no 
positive  context  whatsoever. 

273 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

Take  the  latter  point  first.  Is  it  true  that 
what  is  negative  in  one  way  is  thereby  con- 
victed of  incapacity  to  be  positive  in  any  other 
way?  The  word  "  Fact "  is  like  the  word  "Acci- 
dent," like  the  word  "Absolute"  itself.  They 
all  have  their  negative  connotation.  In  truth, 
their  whole  connotation  is  negative  and  rela- 
tive. All  it  says  is  that,  whatever  the  thing 
may  be  that  is  denoted  by  the  words,  other 
things  do  not  control  it.  Where  fact,  where 
accident  is,  they  must  be  silent,  it  alone  can 
speak.  But  that  does  not  prevent  its  speaking 
as  loudly  as  you  please,  in  its  own  tongue.  It 
may  have  an  inward  life,  self-transparent  and 
active  in  the  maximum  degree.  An  indeter- 
minate future  volition  on  my  part,  for  example, 
would  be  a  strict  accident  as  far  as  my  present 
self  is  concerned.  But  that  could  not  prevent 
it,  in  the  moment  in  which  it  occurred,  from  being 
possibly  the  most  intensely  living  and  lumin- 
ous experience  I  ever  had.  Its  quality  of  being 
a  brute  fact  ab  extra  says  nothing  whatever  as 
to  its  inwardness.  It  simply  says  to  outsiders: 

*  Hands  off!' 

274 


ABSOLUTISM  AND  EMPIRICISM 

And  this  brings  us  back  to  the  first  point  of 
the  Absolutist  indictment  of  Fact.  Is  that 
point  really  anything  more  than  a  fantastic 
dislike  to  letting  anything  say  'Hands  off'? 
What  else  explains  the  contempt  the  Abso- 
lutist authors  exhibit  for  a  freedom  defined 
simply  on  its  "negative"  side,  as  freedom 
"from,"  etc.?  What  else  prompts  them  to 
deride  such  freedom?  But,  dislike  for  dislike, 
who  shall  decide?  Why  is  not  their  dislike  at 
having  me  "from"  them,  entirely  on  a  par 
with  mine  at  having  them  "through"  me? 

I  know  very  well  that  in  talking  of  dislikes 
to  those  who  never  mention  them,  I  am  doing 
a  very  coarse  thing,  and  making  a  sort  of  intel- 
lectual Orson  of  myself.  But,  for  the  life  of 
me,  I  can  not  help  it,  because  I  feel  sure  that 
likes  and  dislikes  must  be  among  the  ultimate 
factors  of  their  philosophy  as  well  as  of  mine. 
Would  they  but  admit  it!  How  sweetly  we 
then  could  hold  converse  together!  There  is 
something  finite  about  us  both,  as  we  now 
stand.  We  do  not  know  the  Absolute  Whole 
yet.   Part  of  it  is  still  negative  to  us.   Among 

275 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

the  whats  of  it  still  stalks  a  mob  of  opaque 
thatS)  without  which  we  cannot  think.  But 
just  as  I  admit  that  this  is  all  possibly  pro- 
visional, that  even  the  Anselmian  proof  may 
come  out  all  right,  and  creation  may  be  a 
rational  system  through-and-through,  why 
might  they  not  also  admit  that  it  may  all  be 
otherwise,  and  that  the  shadow,  the  opacity, 
the  negativity,  the  "from"-ness,  the  plurality 
that  is  ultimate,  may  never  be  wholly  driven 
from  the  scene.  We  should  both  then  be  avow- 
edly making  hypotheses,  playing  with  Ideals. 
Ah !  Why  is  the  notion  of  hypothesis  so  abhor- 
rent to  the  Hegelian  mind  ? 

And  once  down  on  our  common  level  of 
hypothesis,  we  might  then  admit  scepticism, 
since  the  Whole  is  not  yet  revealed,  to  be  the 
soundest  logical  position.  But  since  we  are  in 
the  main  not  sceptics,  we  might  go  on  and 
frankly  confess  to  each  other  the  motives  for 
our  several  faiths.  I  frankly  confess  mine  —  I 
can  not  but  think  that  at  bottom  they  are  of 
an  aesthetic  and  not  of  a  logical  sort.  The 
"through-and-through"    universe    seems    to 

276 


ABSOLUTISM  AND  EMPIRICISM 

suffocate  me  with  its  infallible  impeccable  all- 
pervasiveness.  Its  necessity,  with  no  possibili- 
ties; its  relations,  with  no  subjects,  make  me 
feel  as  if  I  had  entered  into  a  contract  with 
no  reserved  rights,  or  rather  as  if  I  had  to  live 
in  a  large  seaside  boarding-house  with  no  pri- 
vate bed-room  in  which  I  might  take  refuge 
from  the  society  of  the  place.  I  am  distinctly 
aware,  moreover,  that  the  old  quarrel  of  sinner 
and  pharisee  has  something  to  do  with  the 
matter.  Certainly,  to  my  personal  knowledge, 
all  Hegelians  are  not  prigs,  but  I  somehow  feel 
as  if  all  prigs  ought  to  end,  if  developed,  by 
becoming  Hegelians.  There  is  a  story  of  two 
clergymen  asked  by  mistake  to  conduct  the 
same  funeral.  One  came  first  and  had  got  no 
farther  than  "I  am  the  Resurrection  and  the 
Life,"  when  the  other  entered.  "I  am  the 
Resurrection  and  the  Life,"  cried  the  latter. 
The  "through-and-through"  philosophy,  as  it 
actually  exists,  reminds  many  of  us  of  that 
clergyman.  It  seems  too  buttoned-up  and 
white-chokered  and  clean-shaven  a  thing  to 
speak  for  the  vast  slow-breathing  unconscious 

277 


ESSAYS  IN  RADICAL  EMPIRICISM 

Kosmos  with  its  dread  abysses  and  its  un- 
known tides.  The  "freedom"  we  want  to  see 
there  is  not  the  freedom,  with  a  string  tied  to 
its  leg  and  warranted  not  to  fly  away,  of  that 
philosophy.  "Let  it  fly  away,"  we  say,  "from 
ml  What  then?" 

i  Again,  I  know  I  am  exhibiting  my  mental 
grossness.  But  again,  Ich  kann  nicht  anders.  I 
show  my  feelings;  why  will  they  not  show 
theirs?  I  know  they  have  sl  personal  feeling 
about  the  through-and-through  universe, 
which  is  entirely  different  from  mine,  and 
which  I  should  very  likely  be  much  the  better 
for  gaining  if  they  would  only  show  me  how. 
Their  persistence  in  telling  me  that  feeling  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  question,  that  it  is  a 
pure  matter  of  absolute  reason,  keeps  me  for 
ever  out  of  the  pale.  Still  seeing  a  that  in 
things  which  Logic  does  not  expel,  the  most  I 
can  do  is  to  aspire  to  the  expulsion.  At  present 
I  do  not  even  aspire.  Aspiration  is  a  feeling. 
What  can  kindle  feeling  but  the  example  of 
feeling?  And  if  the  Hegelians  will  refuse  to  set 
an  example,  what  can  they  expect  the  rest  of 

278 


ABSOLUTISM  AND  EMPIRICISM 

us  to  do?  To  speak  more  seriously,  the  one 
fundamental  quarrel  Empiricism  has  with  Ab- 
solutism is  over  this  repudiation  by  Abso- 
lutism of  the  personal  and  aesthetic  factor  in 
the  construction  of  philosophy.  That  we  all  of 
us  have  feelings,  Empiricism  feels  quite  sure. 
That  they  may  be  as  prophetic  and  anticipa- 
tory of  truth  as  anything  else  we  have,  and 
some  of  them  more  so  than  others,  can  not 
possibly  be  denied.  But  what  hope  is  there  of 
squaring  and  settling  opinions  unless  Absolut- 
ism will  hold  parley  on  this  common  ground ; 
and  will  admit  that  all  philosophies  are  hypo- 
theses, to  which  all  our  faculties,  emotional 
as  well  as  logical,  help  us,  and  the  truest  of 
which  will  at  the  final  integration  of  things  be 
found  in  possession  of  the  men  whose  faculties 
on  the  whole  had  the  best  divining  power? 


INDEX 


Absolute  Idealism:  46,  60,  99, 
102, 134, 195, 256  ff .,  Essay  XII. 

Activity:  x,  Essay  VI. 

Affectional  Facts:  34  ff.,  Essay 
V,  217  ff. 

Agnosticism:  195. 

Appreciations.  See  Affectional 
Facts. 

Bebgson,  H.:  156,  188. 
Berkeley:  10-11,  43,  76,  77,  212, 

232. 
Bode,  B.  H.:  234  ff. 
Body:  78,  84  ff.,  153,  221. 
Bradley,  F.  H.:  60,  98,  99,  100, 

107  ff.,  157,  162. 

Cause:  163,  174,  181  ff. 

Change:  161. 

Cognitive  Relation:  52  ff.  See 
also  under  Knowledge. 

Concepts:  15  ff.,  22,  33,  54  ff., 
65  ff. 

Conjunctive  Relations  :  x,  44  ff ., 
59,  70,  94,  104,  107  ff.,  117  ff., 
163,  240. 

Consciousness:  xi,  Essay  I,  75, 
80,  127  ff.,  139  ff.,  154, 184,  Es- 
say VIII. 

Continuity:  48  ff.,  59,  70,  94. 

Democritus:  11. 

Descartes:  30. 

Dewey,  J.:  53, 1567191,  204, 247, 

260. 
Disjunctive  Relations:  x,  42  ff., 

105.  107  ff. 
Dualism:  10,  207  ff.,  225,  257. 


Empiricism:  iv-v,  vii-xiii,  41,  46- 
47,  Essay  XII.  See  also  under 
Radical  Empiricism. 

Epistemology:  239.  See  also  un- 
der Knowledge. 

Ethics:  194. 

Experience:  vii,  xii,  8  ff.,  53,  62, 
ff.,  71,  80,  87,  92,  216,  224,  233, 
242,  243.  See  also  under  Pure 
Experience. 

External  Relations:  HOff.  See 
also  under  Relations,  and 
Disjunctive. 

Feeling.  See  under  Affectional 

Facts. 
Free  Will:  185. 

Haldane,  J.  S.:  266  ff. 
Hegel:  106,  276,  277. 
Herbart:  106. 
Hobhouse,  L.  T. :  109. 
Hodder,  A.  L.:  22,  109. 
Hodgson,  S.:  ix,  48. 
Hoffding,  H.:  238. 
Humanism:  90,  156,  Essay  VII, 

Essay  XI. 
Hume:  x,  42,  43,  103,  174. 

Idealism:  39,  40,  134,  219.  241, 

256. 
Ideas:  55  ff.,  73,  177,  209. 
Identity,  Philosophy    of:    134, 

197,  202. 
Indeterminism:  90,  274. 
Intellect:  97  ff. 


Joseph,  H.  W.  B.:  203,  244  ff. 


281 


INDEX 


Kant:  1,  37,  162,  206. 

Kierkegaard: 238. 

Knowledge:  4,  25,  56  ff.,  68  ff., 
87-88, 196  ff.,  231.  See  also  un- 
der Cognitive  Relation,  Ob- 
jective Reference. 

Life:  87,  161. 
Locke:  10. 
Logic:  269  ff. 
Lotze:  59,  75,  167. 

Materialism:  179,  232. 

Mill,  J.  S.:x,  43,  76. 

Mill,  James:  43. 

Miller,  D.:  54. 

Minds,  their  Conterminousness: 

76  ff.,  Essay  IV. 
Monism:  vii,  208,  267  ff. 
Moore,  G.  E.:  6-7. 
Munsterberg,  H.:  1,  18-20, 158. 

Natorp,  P.:  1,  7-8. 
Naturalism:  96. 
Neo-Kantism:  5-0. 

Objective  Reference:  67  ff. 
Objectivity:  23  ff.,  79. 

Panpstchism:  89,  188. 
Parallelism:  210. 
Perception:  11  ff.,  17,  33,  65,  78, 

82  ff.,  197,  200,  211  ff. 
Perry,  R.  B.:  24. 
Physical  Reality:  14,  22,  32, 124 

ff.,  139  ff.,  149  ff.,  154,  211  ff., 

229, 235. 
Pitkin,  W.  B.:  241  ff. 
Pluralism:  89,  90,  110. 
Pragmatism:  iv,  x,  xi-xii,  11,  72, 

97  ff.,  156,  159,  176,  242,  261. 
Primary  Qualities:  147. 


Prince,  M. :  88. 

Pringle-Pattibon,  A.  S. :  109. 

Psychology: 206,  209  ff. 

Pure  Experience:  4,  23,  26-27, 
35,  Essay  II,  74,  90,  93  ff.,  96, 
121, 123, 134, 135, 138, 139, 160, 
193,  200,  226  ff.,  257. 

Radical  Empiricism:  iv-v,  vii, 
ix-xiii,  41  ff.,  47,  48,  69,  76,  89, 
91,  107,  109,  121,  148,  156,  159, 
182,  235,  237,  238,  239,  241,  242. 

Rationalism:  41,  96  ff.,  237,  266. 

Realism:  16,  40,  76,  82  ff. 

Rehmke,  J.:  1. 

Relations:  x,  16, 25, 42  ff.,  71,  81, 
Essay  III,  148, 268.  See  also  un- 
der Conjunctive  and  Disjunc- 
tive. 

Religion:  xiii,  194. 

Renouvier:  184-185. 

Representation:  61,  196  ff.,  212 
ff.  See  also  under  Substitu- 
tion. 

Royce,  J.:  21,  158,  186-187,  195. 

Santa yana,  G.:  143,  218. 
Schiller,  F.  C.  S.:  109,  191,  204, 
249,  260. 

SCHUBERT-SOLDERN,  R.  V.:  2. 

Schuppe,  W.:  1. 

Secondary  Qualities:  146,  219. 

Self:  45,  46,  94,  128  ff. 

Sensation:  30,  201. 

Sidis,  B.:  144. 

Solipsism:  Essay  IX. 

Space:  30-31,  84,  94,  110,  114. 

Spencer,  H.:  144. 

Spinoza:  208. 

Spir,  A.:  106. 

Stout,  G.  F.:  109,  158. 

Strong,  C.  A.:  54,  88,  89, 188. 


282 


INDEX 


Subjectivity:  233.,  234ff.,  251  ff. 
Substitution:  62  ff.,  104.  201. 

Taine:  20,  62. 

Taylob,  A.  E.:  111. 

Teleology:  179. 

Things:  1,  9  ff.,  28  ff.,  37,  Essay 

III,  209. 
Thought:  1,  22,  28  ff.,  37.  213. 

See  also  under  Knowledge. 


Time:  27,  94. 
Tbanscendentalism:  39,  52,  67, 

71,  75,  239. 
Tbuth:  24,  98, 192,  202  ff.,  247  ff. 


Wabd.  J.:  157,  162. 
Will:  165,  184. 
Woodbbidge,  F.  J.  E. 
Wobth:  186-187. 
Wundt,  W.:152. 


196. 


PRINTED  BY  H.  O.  HOUGHTON  &  CO. 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASS. 

U.S.A. 


SOHTHCDM  o!^s"y  of  California 
LOS  M^ctZ&T^™** 


//%> 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A  A 


001  416  118 


CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
University  of  California,  San  Diego 

DATE  DUE 


FEB  0  7  1975 


— 


■" 


MAR  0  7  1975 





#fl 


A  Dn 


— m 


[  ft  8 

JUL  08  19* 


'39 


UCSD  Libr. 


